The World's Most Ordinary Wedding
by AndThatWasEnough
Summary: Sike! Not if these meddling kids have any say in the matter. But what's to be done? She waited for him – and that turned out to be her biggest mistake. {A sort-of sequel.}
1. Always See Your Face

**Author's Note: So, when I get stuck on _For Their Flowers_ , this story gets worked on. Some of you may know Mary Mathews and Lee Curtis and their star-crossed lovers act from my other stories, and for me, their relationship has been almost as fun for me to write as the one between Mary's parents. It's a second gen story, so there are a lot of second gen characters, but our boys are as important as ever to this story as they are in one where they're the focus, even if this is a bit self-indulgent! But I'm ready to give it a shot.**

 **Just so you know: Mary is the daughter of Two-Bit, and Lee is the son of Darry, and they are both their oldest. Also, SE Hinton owns _The Outsiders_. I own nothing you recognize.**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

I kissed Mary Mathews for the first time on Easter Sunday of 1989. And in the Sunday school room of all places, too. The story has become just another one among a multitude of others that this family shares. We all laugh about it these days because we were kids and Dad and Uncle Two-Bit had caught us in the act right after the service that morning, and in retrospect, I guess it's _kinda_ funny. The story, at least. But what's not that funny and is really much more serious is that I haven't been able to get over Mary ever since.

And that's a problem.

Because I'm getting married.

But not to her.

xXx

Oh, and I'm Lee, by the way. Lee Curtis.

xXx

Okay, so you might think that the situation I've gotten myself into is stupid and pretty easily solved, in which case, you are dead wrong. You are so fucking wrong, I cannot even _begin_ to express to you how wrong you are. You are so wrong, two-plus-two equaling five looks right. And that's the damn truth. Look, I got into this on accident because contrary to popular belief, I'm kinda awkward – around girls especially – and I didn't even mean to ask Melissa to marry me. I'm not joking – this whole wedding is an accident. When I told my sisters, they thought it was a total scream. They started laughing like the pair of hyenas they are.

 _"You have to be shitting us!" Joan, the baby, squealed. "Really, Lee! Really!"_

 _"How could you have fucked the whole thing up that badly? If this is what happens when you try to suggest to a girl that you get a dog, I'd like to see what happens when you actually try to propose," Martha laughed._

My little sisters suck.

But Martha had a fair point. On Valentine's Day, we were out at a nice restaurant, and all I was gonna do was suggest that maybe we get a dog, and somehow she ends up with the idea that I'm trying to ask her to marry me, and the entire wait staff did, too, and it was all so embarrassing and awkward for me that I just decided to go with it. I mean, I got some pretty good sex out of the deal when we got home that night, but instead of getting the Retriever I'd wanted, I'd landed myself with a fiancé.

And look, Melissa is a nice girl. We've been dating for a year-ish, and things have been moving pretty fast, probably because I've had my mother breathing down my neck. Which I wouldn't understand if it weren't for her whole southern debutante thing, because she and Dad had to rush into marriage because she'd gotten pregnant with me. Now, my parents? They love each other. Dad's kinda a grump and Mom's pretty sunshiny, but they just work together. Their romance was a whirlwind, and it's worked for them for over twenty-five years. Mary's parents had it pretty different. I think she and I have pretty differing views of love because of that.

Mary's family lives in New York, hundreds of miles away from my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma. I've seen her every summer every year of my life, sometimes more than that. And ever since that Easter of '89, every summer was like carrying on with a kind of relationship that we tried to keep a secret. I think we did a pretty good job of keeping it low-key because I think everyone figured that we'd gotten over each other when we were still pretty young. Yeah, not the case. Hell, I've even told her I love her.

 _"Like a cousin, you mean," she'd tried to clarify._

 _"No, like a girl who I met and fell in love with_."

We were in high school. I've never been the poet laureate, kissass kinda guy. I played football and did pretty good in school most of the time and had a different date to every homecoming dance and prom I attended. My sisters sometimes thought I was some sort of cad, but I just didn't like being tied down, especially since the one girl I'd ever liked enough to want to be tied down to lived so far away. And calling her would just look suspicious.

When she was down here, or the few times the family went to New York, we'd always sneak out, or have two minute conversations in closets that didn't have to do with any of the rest of the family, just us. And she was nothing like the girls down here, the ones I'd gone to school with all my life. She wasn't one of those girls who loved horses more than people, or some sort of debutante like my mother.

She was just Mary, with her curly dark hair and doe eyes and absolute fearlessness.

xXx

I heard the news devastated her.

xXx

But then again, Annette Randle is a notorious gossip.

xXx

Vinny and Tommy Randle are five years younger than I am, but by this point, it really doesn't matter. None of us is exactly kids anymore, are we? I already feel like an old man some days. But Vinny and Tommy are fun, and being around those two knuckleheads makes me feel pretty good, even if I can remember when they were born.

It was the end of April. Storm season would soon be upon us. I'd been doing some work for Dad. I'd been engaged for two months. Melissa wanted to get married in October. Mary's birthday was in October, and I'd have to be sure we avoided that date like the plague. My mother had tasked me with making a delivery to Aunt Evie. The four moms have some strange little network set up between themselves with a connection that runs almost as deep as it does with Dad and his crew. Almost.

Vinny was sitting on the porch railing, not wearing a shirt, chewing on a toothpick and toying with something. As I came up the front walk, I asked him, "Are those Legos?"

Vinny shot me a grin. "Sure are. Found an unopened set up in the attic this morning. It's s'posed to be a little house, but everyone knows followin' the directions ain't any fun. Lookin' for Ma?" I nodded. "She's on the phone with Aunt Bee. What ya think your mom sent over today?"

I looked down at the dainty little picnic basket in my hands. It was a white-painted wicker with little fake blue flowers woven within it. I felt like a pansy carrying it. A guy my size shouldn't be carrying around little white picnic baskets. But Vinny knows as well as I do that our mothers have no problem with humiliating their sons, and that's something all of them got.

"Social call?" I asked, referring to Aunt Evie and Aunt Bee's conversation. I could hear Evie's voice carrying through the open windows. Bee is Mary's mom.

"Dunno," Vinny shrugged. "Maybe. Bee's the one called Ma. Maybe it's more gossip about you," he said slyly, the dog. "Say, who's in charge of plannin' your bachelor party?"

Vincent and Thomas may be named after the saints, but they're anything but.

"Knowing you and your dumbass brother? Neither of ya, so don't try." He flipped me the bird, and I barked a short laugh and waltzed inside, where Aunt Evie was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window and twirling the phone cord around her finger. I felt a bit awkward as I hovered in the doorway, waiting for her to notice me.

"…oh, _shut. Up!_ You have to be making this up! Oh, good God. This girl really came into your house and said that? To your face? Oh, god, what did Two-Bit do? You're _kidding_. Well you best tell Lisa to stay the hell away from that girl, and goodness, Bridget, I've got half a mind to fly out there and give this chick a piece of my mind! Please don't tell me you took her seriously. Stuck-up bitches like her are the absolute worst. You would know, you were one." Evie cackled, and I could hear Uncle Two-Bit's wife doing the same on the other end of the line, hundreds of miles away. I came a little further into the kitchen, finally catching Evie's eye. She grinned when she saw me. "Alright," she said, coming down from her laughter. "Alright, talk soon. Buh-bye. Bye." She hung up and turned her attention to me. "I see you've got a delivery for me."

I grinned and held out the basket. "For you from Mom."

Evie walked over and gently took the little picnic basket out of my hands. She would surely appreciate it more than I did. She took a peek inside and instantly started giggling, then snapped it shut again. "Kid, your mother's a hoot and a half."

I raised my eyebrows. "Guess so, but nobody's lettin' me in on the joke."

Aunt Evie laughed again. You could hear Evie's laugh from a mile off. "Honey, ya don't wanna know. _Trust_ me." I blushed. "That's what I thought."

I mean, I'd learned a few of the things that they'd exchanged over the years. Well-loved recipes; old and new photographs from gatherings and vacations; scrapbook-worthy mementos. I guess that was an older lady thing to do. Now that I think about it, though, I think they'd all been collecting and scraping together and turning all sorts of little things into keepsakes to tuck into giant books and binders. We were a well-documented family, that's for sure.

"So I just got off the phone with Aunt Bee," Evie continued, already prattling around the kitchen, probably getting dinner ready. "She and Two-Bit are just so _excited_ for you! Oh, we all are, Lee." She shot me her winningest smile. "First one of our babies to get _married_ ," she sang. "I know your mother is just over the moon."

Oh, she certainly was.

I smiled back at Evie. Seems everyone had been so caught up in their own happiness about it, about my engagement, that nobody had bothered to ask _me_ what I thought about the whole thing, about how I was feeling about getting married. Well, except Martha and Joan. I could tell them anything. "She sure is," I drawled. "She have anything else good?"

"Well, she told me just the funniest story about some friend of Lisa's, some little stuck-up snob. You need to let her tell it, though. It's funny and terrible at the same time." Evie laughed again just at the thought of it.

"And Dallas? He's good?" Dallas Mathews was a great guy. He was the closest guy in age to me of the twelve of us, and a helluva ball player. Funny as all get-out, and not easy to shut up. But he had his own pockets of sadness. As we all do.

"Doing _so_ much better than he was last year. Much healthier." He also had diabetes and had an accident down here last year. Could've died. I didn't like thinking about it because I'd been in town, as usual, and should have been looking out for him.

"And, uh, Mary?" I could've sworn that anyone who heard me say her name would know instantly how bad I had it for her. I struggled to say it because of how much…how much…because of how much I wanted it to be her and because of how confused I was as to why it wasn't.

That's the worst part of all of this – the confusion. I've gotten myself all messed up and my feelings and thoughts are always muddled. Nearly all the time now. I think I've done a pretty good job of hiding it, though; from Melissa and to everyone who showed up to our engagement party and to the rest of the family. I've hidden it from my buddies, the ones from work and the ones from high school and the ones from my football days. I do feel guilty about it, I do, but I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here, and I'm the only one that knows it. And October just keeps getting closer and closer…

"Fine," Evie said simply. "She's enjoying D.C., but other than that, it seems her life has been pretty uneventful lately. Wish I could say the same!"

I chuffed softly and shook my head. That's Evelyn Randle for ya.

xXx

"Alright, boys – pack it up."

I like working for Dad. We make a good team, I think, and even though I'm still just working my way up the ladder, I'd like to put this business degree of mine to use someday and really help him out with more than grunt work. But that's the thing: I don't _mind_ the grunt work. I mean, sometimes I do, but I like getting to work outside, get some fresh air. Some of the other guys think this sort of attitude is way too healthy, but, ya know, what-the-fuck-ever. I was the one who got the last laugh when I made foreman. And not just because I'm the boss's kid, neither.

I was headed towards my truck, getting ready to head home, but when I got there found Annie and Fran leaning up against it. Fran is my real cousin, Uncle Sodapop's only daughter since his wife ran off, and Annie is like a cousin: similar in relationship without the biological relation. I smiled at both of them, even though they both looked pretty pissed, with their arms crossed over their chests and scowls on their faces. They were always so in-synch.

"Hey, guys."

"Well, howdy, Lee," Annie snapped, always a domineering conversational force.

"Alright, you two," I sighed as I put my tools in the truck bed. "What's up?"

At first, they didn't say anything. I stood there in the late summer sunlight - August still bein' hot as hell, mind you – and watched and waited for the first to pop. It was a classic stare-down, just like the good ol' days. If family's good for anything, they're good for fightin'. I guess the quiet got to be too much eventually, because Fran exploded first.

"How could you do it?" She burst. "You've done some damn stupid things in your life, Lee Curtis, but this has got to take the cake! And Martha and Joan told us the truth about this whole sham of an engagement, so the fact that you're goin' through with it is just plain disgusting, if you ask me."

"Well, I didn't," I said shortly. "You wouldn't get it, either of you."

"You broke her heart," Annie spat, referring to – who else? – Mary. "She told us everything, too, about the two of you. I can't believe you! First you get yourself into this ridiculous situation with a woman you aren't even really sure you love, and now you're too big a coward to back out!"

"You wouldn't get it," I snapped. "You shoulda seen my mom when she found out. She was…god, she was so _happy_."

"She'd be happier if you were being honest," Fran said coolly. "And we know how you hid it from Mary, too. Went to great lengths to do so. What the fuck is your problem, Lee?"

"I don't know, but y'all better mind your own goddamn business!" I shouted angrily, drawing a few stares. I sighed and waved them off, then turned back to _these two_. "If it makes it any better," I seethed, "I'm just as confused as you are."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Annie asked.

"Means that goddammit, I don't know what the hell my problem is. Yeah, I told Mom not to tell, not just then. She thought I wanted to make it a big ol' surprise! Well, guess the fuck what? It's August now, and y'all expect me to not invite Bee and Two-Bit?"

"We expect you to be honest, Lee," Fran said. "And you're not. You're a big fuckin' liar, and now you gotta ask yourself if you're any more in love with Melissa now than you were back in February."

"Enough with this honesty crap. Lee, do you love Mary?"

"Fran - !"

" _Do you?"_

A lump instantly started growing in my throat. I tried to clear it, but it was just stuck there. Dammit, I couldn't break down and just start crying. They really didn't know how happy it made Mom when she found out. Nobody but the five of us knew that it was all an accident, but Melissa called damn near everybody she knew, and didn't give me a chance to back out. I guess somewhere along the way, I just figured that it could be a lot worse, ya know? And it _is_. It totally _is_.

"You have no idea how stupid I feel," I mumbled.

"We have an idea," Annie said dryly. "Now answer the question."

"Yes," I said without hesitating.

"Like, love-love her."

" _Yes."_ Fran and Annie glanced at each other, communicating something I couldn't read. I felt anxious, like I was losing control. "Guys?"

Fran turned back to me with a sad smile on her face. "You really fucked up, didn't ya, pal?"

xXx

Oh, yeah. I really did.

xXx

In case you're somehow wondering, I'm still engaged. To Melissa, I mean. Not Mary. The closer I get to my wedding, the worse I'm getting at hiding my confusion over this from certain people. My mother's been too busy planning to really notice and to be anything but happy, but my ever-perceptive father noticed first. He knows me too well. He and I, we're a lot alike. That's usually a good thing. My love of football comes from him, and more than that, my desire to be as good and as honest a man as he is. I hope to someday be that honest, at least with myself.

"There's something up with you," he said on the way home from a poker game with Uncle Steve, Uncle Soda, and Vinny and Tommy. We get together sometimes. Us kids have finally been invited to the big kid table!

I glanced briefly at Dad. He was wearing one of his construction company's ball caps over his full head of gradually greying hair. Dad apparently looked a lot like his father – my grandfather, the one I'd never known, though Uncle Pony tells me I can see him in my father and know him in their brother – and I apparently look something like the old man. I guess I can sometimes see it. Even though his voice is somewhat serious, he's got this content look on his face; he's apparently relaxed a lot more, like the older he gets the more chill he becomes. I guess he passed all of his high-strung genes off to Martha.

"Like what?" I asked casually.

"I dunno," he mused, "but it's somethin'. Does it have to do with the wedding? Melissa?" I instantly tensed up a bit and let out a slow, cool breath. That was enough for Dad. "Huh. I'll be. What's up? And don't go tryin' to hide anything from me. It's too late for that."

"You sure?" I tried with a weak laugh.

"Yep. It's been too late since the day you were born."

I pulled up in front of the house, my old childhood home. I live only a few minutes away, and I sometimes wonder if I'll ever get out of Tulsa. I threw my truck in park, but Dad didn't make a move to get out. I knew Mom was probably waiting up for him inside, gearing to talk his ear off. (Mom was a bit chatty, to put it nicely.) Come to think of it, he probably knew that, too, which might have influenced him staying a few extra minutes, to get just a few more minutes of male companionship. Dad was sorta old-fashioned in that way.

"You really wanna know?" I asked, and Dad nodded, spreading his hands out as if to say he was all ready to listen. "It's kinda…well, it's kinda touchy-feely, and I know you ain't touchy-feely."

"Trust me, kid, after your sisters, I'm well prepared for just about anything you could throw at me."

"Yeah," I laughed, "but this could really change things."

"Just tell me what it is, Lee, and then we'll figure it in."

Growing up, I think Dad worked pretty hard to make sure he and I had a good relationship, and not just because I was his oldest and only son, but because of what he and Grandpa Curtis had, even though it was such a short time in the grand scheme of things. But I think there's an important difference between him and me, and maybe it was a generational thing, but while I could go to him for anything, I couldn't always go to him with everything. Because sometimes, I could swear my dad was made of stone. But this time felt different because this time _had_ to be different. I glanced at the house again, the realization hitting me that if my mother knew this, she'd never recover. I sighed and gripped the steering wheel even tighter and looked over earnestly at the old man.

"Dad? It's not about Melissa. It's about Mary."

XXXXX

 **AN: Thank you for reading! Updates on this story might be a bit more sporadic as I work on FTF, but it's also much shorter, so we'll see!**


	2. Waitin' For You

**Chapter Two: Waitin' For You**

 **Author's Note: We're back! So, we've heard from Lee, but now it's time to hear from Mary…**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

For an early twenty-fifth birthday present, Lee Curtis gave me my broken heart in the form of a save-the-date.

xXx

Look, it's not like I'm one of those ooey-gooey romantic types. Okay? Dallas is the nostalgic one, Lisa is the idealist, and I guess I'm the practical one. Wanting to be with Lee was the least practical thing I'd ever wanted, and he was my least practical desire.

xXx

You wanna know who's a bona-fide romantic? My parents.

I mean, Dad will hide it. He will swear up and down to the day he dies that he hates that schmaltzy crap that my mother so clearly adores, but the funny thing is that he's the one always with the PDA, and she's the reserved one. But that's just in public – just wait until they get home. I've been out of the house for about seven years now, and I'm still not safe from these outward displays of their deep and abiding love for each other.

It's disgusting.

xXx

The real wallop came when I went home for a week in August. It was already hard enough for me because, well, I was seeing a guy myself. Dad hated everybody I brought home, every single one of them. Matter of fact, the first time I kissed Lee, he and Uncle Darry had caught us, and Dad had gone ballistic. Something tells me that things would be different now, that if I were to end up with Lee Curtis, my father would be over the moon. It would be a dream for him for his oldest daughter to marry his best friend's son.

I have a funky family. My mother has no siblings, but there's her father and step-mother, and then Dad's mother and sister and her husband and six (six!) children. But Dad has these buddies he grew up with, four of them, and they're basically his brothers, which means they're family. I've known Lee Curtis my entire life, and the rest of the twelve of us kids all of _their_ lives. We're pretty well spread out, but ever since the Easter of 1989, it's like Lee and I have had an understanding; that we just pick right up where we left off the last time we saw each other. I mean, I've never had sex with him, but he was the first boy I kissed and the first one who told me he loved me, and the first one I said it back to.

All the boys here in New York have meant nothing.

Which is what makes the situation with this new guy I'm seeing so weird.

I'm twenty-five, but I think I'm already settling.

Because even though Lee and I were always able to pick right back up, those times were few and far between, in the grand scheme.

Mom got married to Dad when she was twenty-five and pregnant with me. My parents had already been engaged for a while, but I guess I was the straw that broke the camel's back and made them take the plunge. I am as old as their marriage, but not as old as their love, which I know runs deep. It's admirable.

I'm worried the stars will never align for me in that way.

xXx

Okay, you know what? Let's start over because this is all making me sound like a fucking sap.

(But let's make one thing very clear: Lee Curtis broke my fucking heart. I probably broke his, too, but ya know what? I'm talkin'.)

I went home to visit my parents. Just because. Also because I had convinced myself that Long Island _had_ to be at least a little cooler than Washington DC, which was built on a fucking swamp, in case you didn't know. But it's just beautiful in the spring, all pink with cherry blossoms. That doesn't mean I don't sometimes miss New York, though, because I do. I really, really do. And I know parents are annoying, but sometimes I just like to see them and my baby sister, and my annoying brother, if he's feeling up to visiting. But I wouldn't admit that out loud.

Lisa roped me into doing her nails the first night I got back. Sisterly bonding, I guess. We sat on the window seat upstairs that overlooked the street. You could see just about the whole neighborhood from there, and we had the window cracked just a bit so we could hear all the summery, busy, Long Island sounds I've had ingrained in me my whole life. And the breeze was nice. All in all, I can't say I really minded having Lisa's gross dancer feet in my lap as I painted her toenails a bright electric blue. I'd already painted her fingernails a soft, blushy pink, one of the few colors she was allowed to wear for performing. We had the radio on, too, but kept the volume low. Laughter floated up from downstairs – my father's distinct and my mother's very…we'll say polite – and Lisa glanced at the staircase with an eyebrow raised.

"Sounds like a good time," she said.

"Oh, sure," I sighed, trying to focus and talk at the same time, "if your idea of a good time is…whatever the hell they think is a good time, then sure."

Lisa snorted. "Have you seen Jenny yet?"

Jenny is my best friend. "Not yet."

Mom and Daddy's laughter started to get louder, and I realized they were floating upstairs. Hopefully not to the bedroom because my parents' outward love for each other often manifested in very physical ways, ways that all three of their poor, poor children had on separate occasions had been forced to bear witness to. I guess it was payback for Dad walking in on me awkwardly banging Jacob Wallace my junior year. I briefly stopped my work on Lisa's toes as we both glanced towards the staircase and saw our parents, Daddy's arm around Mom and the two of them coming down off of their excitement. I raised an eyebrow. They got the question.

"Ladies," my father acknowledged. He grimaced at Lisa's feet, or maybe at his daughters whoring each other up. Dad had always understood Dally better. Aunt Sadie must not have prepared him for having daughters. Mom narrowed her brow and detached herself, wandered over to us and told us to shove over. We made room by putting _both_ our feet in her lap.

"Lisa, is that mine?" Mom asked, referring to the bottle of blush pink nail polish next to Lisa.

"Sure is," she sang. "All the dancer's gotta look uniform, so unfortunately, no purple."

"Wouldn't kill you to buy colors that aren't so eye-catching all the time – "

Dad cleared his throat and we all looked at him. He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and held it up. My mother gave a small nod. "The reason we're here?"

"Right," Mom sighed.

"What?" I asked, looking between our parents. Dad handed the envelope over to me, and Lisa poked her head over so she could try and get a glimpse as I opened it and began to read.

That's the thing, though – there wasn't much to be read. Lee Curtis and some chick named Melissa were getting married, and because we're all basically family, of _course_ we were going to RSVP _yes_.

xXx

"Mary. We have to talk about it."

I continued to focus on my book and tried doggedly to ignore my mother. "Talk about what?"

"Mary. I'm serious. We need to talk about this. I know you're upset."

"Me? Upset about what?" I stopped reading and turned on her. "About _Lee?_ Whatever, he's engaged, good for him. We're all _happy_ for him."

xXx

We were not all, in fact, happy for him.

I was not happy for him. I was not happy for him _at all_.

I hadn't even known he was seeing this girl.

The stupid thing about it is, is that it's like I expected him to wait for me or something. That I expected this boy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this son of my father's buddy, this hunk from my childhood to _wait_ for me. I expected for things from our childhood to carry over, to stay the same. As much as I hate to admit it, Dad was right: he lived all the way down there, and I lived all the way out here, and even if every time we saw each other it was as if nothing had changed and we were just as in love as two teenagers could be as last time, it was never going to work out. And now I feel like Julia Roberts in _My Best Friend's Wedding_ , which makes this situation all the more stupid because now I'm acting like some damsel, some cliché, and I fucking hate it.

I hate him.

I hate him and this situation _so much_ , that after Lisa had conked out and my parents had retreated to their bedroom and I had tried in vain to try to get some sleep in my own childhood room, I found myself knocking on my parents' door and sitting between them, leaning against my father while my mother held my hand against my thigh.

I am utterly pathetic.

"I thought you were happy with that…that _senator's son_ ," Dad said, with no small measure of disdain, and Mom shot him a look.

"I thought so, too," I whispered, "until now."

"What's different now?" Mom asked. It would have been easy to just say that it was the wedding, of course, that was different. Marriage. But it was something else, too, and I'm guessing she knew that.

"It feels like he lied. It feels…it feels like he just forgot about me."

I don't know how much Lee's parents and his family know about him and me, but I do now this about that man: Lee can be pretty tight-lipped and eager to please, especially his parents. If he thought getting married right the fuck now would make them happy, he would do it. But my parents, they know. I think they've always known. I've bared my soul – at least on this matter, and to at least my mother – plenty of times. But I think my parents have an intrinsic sixth sense, and I think they always knew. Every summer, they knew. Every visit, they knew.

"Do you think any of it mattered to him?" I continued. "Or did…did he…"

"Of course it mattered," Mom whispered, patting my hand. Hers were always so smooth. "Of course it did. But you've been very focused on your own life, honey – as you should be – and he has been, too, and…and the two of you haven't seen each other in…what?"

"We talk," I tried.

"Not quite the same, Mary dahlin'," Dad mumbled, carding his fingers through my hair. "Take it from me, sweet pea – guys are pigs, and they like it when the girl's there." I glared at him. "Sorry, sweetie. But it's different to just talk to a woman when you could be holdin' 'er."

When Mom didn't say anything, I assumed she agreed, and felt betrayed.

"And nothing had changed," I went on, getting heated. "Nothing was _different_. It was like when he told me he loved me, it wasn't like when you say it to be polite – "

"There's a polite form of ' _I love you'_?"

I glared at Dad again, and this time, Mom did, too. " _Any_ ways…he said it like he's always said it to me, the way where…I just _knew_. We were both busy, but nothing had changed!" I insisted. "He…" I looked back and forth between my parents. They both looked uncharacteristically sad. Normally, my mother is like fucking Snow White or something, and my Dad can't shut the fuck up to save his life, but the solemn expressions I kept switching between conveyed…something.

"I can't quite explain it," I said in a weak voice, for some reason looking at Dad to say this, my eyes boring into his. "I can't quite explain it, but I just _knew_."

"I believe ya," Dad said softly, his drawl in full effect. "But distance is a killer, baby."

I gaped up at him, trying to find the words, and ended up crying instead. He muttered something like " _Oh, baby…"_ and pulled me closer, pressing a kiss to the top of my head and my mother squeezing my hand as I sobbed into my father's chest.

xXx

When I was fourteen and Lisa was eight, Lisa wanted to go see _The Little Mermaid_ , and Mom coaxed me into coming along. I thought that sounded like a pretty stupid idea, but Lisa wheedled away at me, and I eventually agreed, which made both her and Mom happy. I didn't exactly want to go sit through a stupid Disney cartoon, but I did, for whatever reason. I was fourteen years old and was already pushing the envelope with what I was wearing, was already driving my parents crazy, listened to my music too loud and spent more time ignoring my family than I should have. But this was one of the things I had agreed to, and I sat beside my pretty-in-pink sister and my much-too-patient mother and watched _The Little Mermaid_.

And fucking loved it.

Lisa and I loved it so much, we went to see it three more times in the theatres, and watched the VHS tape on repeat on the living room set, banishing our father and brother to watch baseball and the Knicks and the Jets down on the basement set. And I loved it so much, that two years later, Lisa didn't even have to nag me to go see _Beauty in the Beast_ with her, which was so beautiful I cried. I drove Lisa and I to that one, just the two of us, and we shared a huge tub of over-buttered popcorn and cried because shit, it was just…ya know.

That week I went home, Lisa busted out the old VHS tapes and we watched them back-to-back, with _Mary Poppins_ thrown in for good measure. It was like she knew I needed it. We just sat in the basement together with a bowl of popcorn and worked our way through a six pack of Pepsi and watched them all get their happy ending.

"They're making a movie version of _The Princess Diaries_ with Julie Andrews in it," Lisa told me.

"What's that?"

"A YA novel."

"Aren't you a little too old for that?"

"Aren't we a little too old for Disney princesses?"

Lisa shot me a sly smile, and I had to concede her point. But in those movies, there was a happy ending. Always. They would toy with you, make you think they might just do you dirty this time, but that was just a fakeout, and it would all still end on that happy major chord. "I like how…how they always get the happy ending."

Lisa watched the TV for another moment, watched as Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke strolled through cartoon land. "Yeah. It's like…well. Yeah."

xXx

"I'm goin' to kill Darry Curtis. I'm gonna kill 'im! I know I've threatened it before, but this time, I damn well mean it."

"No, you don't. It's not his fault, and you know that."

Lisa and I eavesdropped while we were sitting on the couch in the front room, where the piano was, pretending to read our gossip magazines while actually listening in on our parents' conversation floating in from the kitchen. Mom was right – Dad would never kill Uncle Darry. Try to maim him, maybe. But not kill him.

"You're right," Dad relented, but I could hear the sarcasm in his voice. "It's Jackie's. Her and the rest of yer Ya-Yas."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

I think I knew, though. Jackie now had the distinct honor of being the first of the mothers to have her child get married. Our Mothers were a tight-knit, but competitive bunch. Over the many years, they had traded recipes, stories, pictures, and well-crafted barbs. But even with the competition, there was something special there that they had all worked hard to create, something very Ya-Ya-esque. Our dads went off into their own little world when we would all get together, their own exclusive little club. So our mothers did the next logical thing: made one of their own.

xXx

Tulsa was a couple hours behind us, so I didn't feel bad about calling when it was starting to get late. Annie Randle and Francine Curtis had been marked to be best friends since they were born, and now they shared an apartment together. Their friendship was almost too perfect, but I guess that was just how it is, when your dads are almost inseparable themselves. Like brothers. Like all five of them are. So I called them up, and Annie put me on speaker phone so both she and Fran could give their input while I absentmindedly watched a rerun of _The West Wing_ , a show that now that I was dating senator son James Williams started to feel a bit more real than it had when it first aired.

I will say this, though: Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn are real cuties.

" _Her name is Melissa Macdonald, her father owns a small chain of hardware stores, and she shows horses at the state fair. For what it's worth, she don't look a thing like you,_ " Fran told me. " _But if he wanted a chick who rides, I woulda directed him to you."_

I smirked. "Sweet. Doesn't help me now, though."

" _Guess it doesn't,_ " Annie said. " _For what it's worth, Mary, Franny and I are as confused as you are. The whole thing was sorta unexpected. We didn't even know they were that serious!"_

"Well, what's done is done."

 _"I don't think so_." Leave it to Annie Randle to be so obstinate. Even though they were my brother's age, after Lee, I was closest with them. Annie and I got our noses pierced together. We'd all go riding at Uncle Soda's, Fran on Ziggy Stardust, Annie on Whiskey Rock-a-Roller, and me on White Knight. (All of those horses had wonderfully, gloriously stupid names.) Lisa was six years younger than me – when we were all together, they were who I hung around with, the ones who would get _it_ the most. And they knew all about me and Lee. " _I'm gonna tell that bastard off. He has to know what this is doing to you. And it makes no sense! I know for a fact that he's crazy for you."_

"You do?" I asked, not so sure.

 _"Yes!"_ Annie and Fran yelled into the phone together. Fran sighed and took over. _"Mary, look – if ya wanna know the truth, even Uncle Darry and Aunt Jackie were surprised. I think there's something more to this. I didn't think this girl meant anything, not really."_

"I thought they'd moved in together."

" _Well…yeah…but still!"_ Annie cried. " _It just doesn't make any sense."_

I started to feel as if we were grasping for straws. I stared blankly at the television; the only reason I wanted October to come now was to see if President Bartlet got shot. And nothing else.

xXx

…and now y'all think I'm crazy.

Under any other circumstances, believe me, I would agree with you. Everything about what I am feeling is so unbelievably irresponsible and stupid, that I can hardly believe I'm letting myself feel these things. But now I have to tell you that everything about this is and my beliefs are completely justified, and I can prove it to you. It was right around the time of my mother's fiftieth birthday, February, and we – Lee and I - were talking on the phone. I sat in front of the window in my apartment and stared out at a dark and snowy Washington, staring at the moon. I twirled the phone cord through my fingers as he spoke to me in his tired Okie drawl.

" _She's nice,"_ he told me, and I know now he was referring to Melissa Macdonald, " _but. Ya know. It's funny, Mare, she ain't a thing like ya."_

"Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?" I'd asked him. "Seeing other people, I mean. My parents hate the guys I keep bringing home, so why do I bother? One of these days, you should just fly up here so I can bring _you_ over for dinner. They'd love that." He laughed a little bit, and I had to smile. "If we're so sure, why are we _waiting?_ "

Lee sighed. " _Maybe we're…waitin' for somethin'."_

"Like what?"

 _"Like…like, I don't know. A sign? But you…you've always been out there, and I've always been down here, and it's not like we can just drop everything. Life don't work like that."_

"Then how does it work?" I asked softly. "You tell me because I can't seem to figure out what's stopping me."

" _Stoppin' ya from what?"_

"From flying out there right now so I can steal you away for myself."

" _Wish you would! But…somethin's stopping us, Mare, and whatever it is…well, you know what they say. If it's s'posed to happen, it'll happen. Somehow."_

"I want it to happen _now_."

Lee didn't say anything for a few moments. I wondered what his day had looked like. He had probably worked beside Uncle Darry all day, learning the ropes of the family business, so some day he could take over. It was cold in Tulsa, too. Dad had called me up the other day to tell me just that. He missed his hometown terribly sometimes, missed his friends even more. But he could never say no to my mother.

" _Mary,"_ Lee eventually began again, softly. He kept starting and stopping like he wanted to say a million different things, but he eventually landed on, " _I love you so much it hurts sometimes, Mary."_

"I do, too."

I waited for him.

Which turned out to be my biggest mistake.

XXXXX

 **AN: Thanks for reading!**


	3. Dirty World

**Author's Note: Aaaaand we're back! Sorry for the delay. College life is quite the adjustment. But I'd like to thank all of you for your continued support!**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

Dad knows how to keep a secret.

xXx

 _"I hate that we have to stay dressed for dinner. I look stupid in this."_

 _"I don't think you look stupid. And before you say it, you don't look fat, either. You could…you'd never look…fat," I said, looking down when I said it. Why the hell did I say that? I'm so stupid. The girl was a string bean._

 _"How'd you know I'd say that?" Mary asked, and I peeked back up at her and her tiny frame. She sounded kinda amused._

 _"Cuz…I dunno, I guess that's just what girls say on TV?"_

 _Mary laughed out loud and shoved my shoulder. Even though the whole family probably knew the deal by now, and even though I'd tried not to, I'd still found myself hanging out with Mary after church. Couldn't help it. "Is that where you learned all you know about girls?" she teased. "From television?"_

 _I groaned. "That, and my dad," I said, smearing my hands down my face. "God, after he found out…he sat me down and gave me this whole talk like I didn't even know any of it…I mean, he keeps skin mags in his closet. You think I learned everything just from television?" Mary blushed. "Yeah. Exactly. But it was more than that."_

 _She raised an eyebrow. "What else did he say?"_

 _I shifted on the porch swing. We were sitting together, our knees almost touching, and our pinkies just barely so. No one else was even paying attention to us, our brothers and sisters playing with all the other kids. Mary and I, we're the oldest. "Well…" I drawled softly, "I mean, it wasn't exactly a sex talk, ya know? It was…it was the whole 'you live here, she lives hundreds of miles away…' that thing. He thinks we're bein' stupid."_

 _Mary seemed to let that sink in, and I thought about it some more myself. I realize that finding us in the Sunday school room kissing probably wasn't the best sight to our dads, but it was the only private place, and I couldn't wait any longer. Hormones, and all that. As we were sitting there, I wanted to do it again, but thought better of it. Mary looked glum. "Yeah. My dad thinks we are, too."_

 _"Well, at least we're bein' stupid together," I grumbled, but Mary still smiled and nudged her knee with mine._

 _"Are they right?" she asked, and I shrugged._

 _"I dunno. My mom hasn't really said anything about it. Has yours?"_

 _"Not much," she said. "I don't…I don't think she really cares as much as they do. But our dads are right, ya know. About the distance thing."_

 _I sighed miserably. "I know."_

 _That was the worst part. They were right. We knew it. But what were we supposed to do about it? Live only for the brief periods in time that we saw each other? The next time wouldn't be until the summer, when they always came down to Tulsa for a couple weeks so we could all be together. And as the summers keep going by, we're going to get older and we're going to meet other people and eventually we'll go to college and maybe she won't always come back. Eventually, we'll just…grow up. I may only be in high school, but I've seen enough movies and TV shows to know how this is gonna end. I'm not stupid._

 _"So," she sighed._

 _"So."_

 _"I guess we'll just…there's nothing to do about it, I guess."_

 _"I guess. I mean, I'll still like you."_

 _Mary smirked. "You don't know that."_

 _"Sure I do."_

 _But she was right - neither of us knew for sure. But when Aunt Evie called us in to eat, we let all the other kids run in first, and then I kissed her cheek, hoping she'd get the message._

xXx

Dad didn't laugh at me like my sisters had when I told him the truth. At least, not at first. I mean, Dad won't shy away from laughing in your face if you do something seriously humiliating, especially if you could have avoided the whole situation in the first place. Believe me, I've been on the receiving end of such treatment plenty of times, and I usually deserve it, but this time felt really different. Because getting married is a big life decision. Ya know? And I hadn't decided that I wanted to get married.

I had decided that I wanted to get a dog.

I think the universe is out to get me for something, and I think I know what for.

xXx

"Did you know that they turned ABBA's greatest hits into a musical?"

"Huh?"

"Didja?"

I sometimes think that Joan is a little too old to still be acting like a little kid. ( _"Didja? DIDJA?"_ ) Well, maybe not like a little kid, but where the hell does she get all this perk from? Lately, I've felt about as spry as a ninety-year-old man with a goddamn brain tumor, and probably definitely also an erectile dysfunction.

"It's called _Mamma Mia_ ," she went on.

"That's…cool, I guess."

"It's _really_ cool," Martha tagged on. She was sitting across the table from us. Mom and Dad always sat opposite each other, so I guess Martha was on her own over there tonight.

Mom sometimes gets us all together – the five of us, just the five of us – for family dinner night. She had a wide repertoire of mostly southern classics, Tex-Mex, and Cajun dishes. The Moms wouldn't eat that shit when they got together, though. They turned their noses right up at it, and drank girly drinks and ate tiny, girly foods like…I don't know, cucumbers and cream cheese on bread or whatever. Dad would probably file for divorce if Mom tried that crap with him, but tonight was country fried steak and potatoes, so their marriage lived to survive another night.

Food is important, I'll tell ya.

"Who the hell asked for an ABBA musical?" Dad grumbled as he aggressively buttered a roll. "Especially when no one asked for them in the first place."

"Wow," Joan shook her head. "Imagine being so incredibly _wrong_. Daddy, you're so wrong about _Mamma Mia_ , that I think it's going to affect your whole life from this point forward 'til ya die! You are missing out on somethin' spectacular! And for what? Monday Night Football? Why have meatloaf when you can have steak?"

Okay, that little speech was directed at me.

xXx

They say honesty is the best policy, ya know. I sometimes live by it.

xXx

Mom always says that letter writing is a lost art. I think that's why she and the other moms do it so often between each other, to keep that little bit of antiquity alive. Every little thing they send to each other has a letter included. I've never had the chance to read any of those letters, but I'm sure they're urbane and witty and probably signed with x's and o's. Unfortunately, I'm not so great with the written word. I can sometimes barely manage the _spoken_ word, as you've probably figured out by now. I don't think it's exactly an issue of being stupid or anything – not to sound like I'm bragging – but I did make good grades in school. I'm just fucking awkward, okay? Which I've mostly learned how to live with, but now it's really fucked me over.

Anyways.

So I'm not a very good writer, but I tried to write everything down. Maybe it was a letter, maybe it was for my own records – like a bank statement or something, just so I could keep track – but I started this little project a few weeks before the wedding, and I'd sit at my kitchen table under the yellow dangling light and try to figure out what exactly I needed to do, and how the fuck I got here in the first place. (And yes, I know how, but I don't know _how_. So shut up.) The conclusion I came to was that I've been doomed since I was born, and that my parents are completely to blame, and I should probably sue them or something.

No, that's stupid. Also, mean because I love my parents and I can't blame them for anything except for the premarital sex they had that eventually resulted in my birth. And I'm probably the one who owes them money, so.

xXx

You're probably wondering about the phone call, aren't you?

xXx

It was after Valentine's Day.

So that means it was after I had already gotten engaged, but pretty early on – early enough that I was still actively looking for a way out. And I was the one who called her, not the other way around. It isn't like she had bad timing or something, no. No, I reached out to her. (Okay, but put the whole thing about me loving her aside: is it true what they say in _When Harry Met Sally?_ Can men and women really not be friends? Are they always attracted to each other? But…but what about gay people?) I guess I have a death wish because if Melissa caught me talking to another woman, no matter how long we've known each other, she'd have a zillion questions, which in this case, she'd be right to have them. Would I have lied to her? If she had caught on, would I have answered her questions honestly? Hell, maybe I was _trying_ to get caught. Then I'd have an out.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring out the window. No snow today, just slush. I wasn't really expecting her to pick up, but I felt lighter the instant I heard her voice. Let me preface all this by saying that Mary Mathews has a fucking great voice. I could listen to this girl talk all day. She has the voice of a Hollywood starlet, all sultry smooth with a bit of a rasp. And it was New Yorker tough, even though she'd been raised in a nice Long Island neighborhood – so, to my ears it sounded tough. Maybe no-nonsense is a better way to describe it. Regardless, I don't know where the hell she got it from, but it was sexy.

" _'Lo?_ "

That was enough for me. I smiled into the phone. "I know you ain't a smoker, so how in the hell does your voice sound like that?"

She'd gotten this question from me too many times before, and I could practically hear her roll her eyes on the other side of the country. " _Getting over a cold?"_ She tried. I huffed a sarcastic laugh.

"Nice try, Lamar."

Phone calls with her were easy. I wasn't great on the phone. Mary apparently couldn't get off the phone when she was a kid. I'd heard Uncle Two-Bit complain plenty of times about how between her and Aunt Bee, their phone bill was through the roof. Though, if you ask me, he probably had as much to do with that as they did. But she would sarcastically ask me what I was wearing, and I would shoot back with, "Leopard print G-string and whipped cream on my tits, you?"

 _"Suspenders. Like Urkel. Cherry on top?"_

"On top of the whipped cream on my tits?"

 _"Yes_."

"And chocolate sauce."

She also had a great laugh. My lines weren't all that great, so I chalked her laughter up to it being late and her probably having a long day, but it was this boisterous cackle that just made me _smile_. She had the radio on in the background, and I could hear the deejay, him and I and her each other's company for the evening. How are people already nostalgic for the eighties? I could hear Dead Or Alive in the background (" _You spin me right round, baby, right round, like a record baby, right round, round round…"_ ) and wondered why the fuck anyone would want to replay that. Then again, I'm not exactly sure you should listen to an Oklahoman's opinion on music. I ain't got no culture.

" _So. I wanted to tell you something._ "

"Shoot."

The talk then turned serious as she told me about this senator son that was after her affections, and I felt my heart sink. I wanted to tell her about my sham of an engagement right then, but I didn't know how. I told her that I was sorta seeing someone because, well, I was hoping that I'd have the guts to give her the boot soon enough and that it wouldn't ever become a problem. I wondered what the fuck was stopping me from flying out there right that moment. And then I remembered my mother.

You're going to think I'm stupid for saying this, but I happen to believe that the universe gives us signs. Melissa's happiness, my mother's happiness, my hesitation, and now this senator-son yuppie after Mary made me feel as if this is what God and/or the universe had planned for me. I was supposed to suffer silently. I guess? Maybe "suffer" isn't the right word. Okay, try this: I think this was a test. (God, if my old man heard me talkin' like this, he'd kick my ass, and hell, I'd let him.) _Que sera, sera_ , and all that good shit.

"…somethin's stopping us, Mare, and whatever it is…well, you know what they say. If it's s'posed to happen, it'll happen. Somehow."

" _I want it to happen_ now."

I started crying. I did. Fucking started crying, right there. I bit my lip to keep myself from making any embarrassing sounds that would give me away, but dammit…just…god _dammit!_ I am the stupidest sonuvabitch alive, no doubt about that. I kept stopping and starting, trying to stop myself from telling her the truth for whatever fucked up reason. "Mary _._ " I sighed, once I'd gotten back some control of myself. All I knew to say was what I knew to be true. "I love you so much it hurts sometimes, Mary _."_

" _I do, too_."

I bit the inside of my cheek. _God_. We said goodbye and I stared out the window 'til the sun came up.

xXx

Yeah, you should all fucking hate me. That's…that's actually the correct reaction.

xXx

"You know they're all comin' down here next week. Lee, the wedding is _next week_."

"I know," I sighed, sounding like a whiny little bitch, and if there's anything my old man hates more than ABBA, it's whiny little bitches.

We were hiding in the closet after dinner, he and I, surrounded by old board games and decks of cards and the pull-string from the light was dangling between us. Dad has about an inch on me. I sometimes wonder if I could take him. I'm a lot younger, played football for longer, still worked out, but so did he, and there's something about him that tells me he could probably kick my ass – and should. "It really isn't too late," he said gently, more gently than he usually speaks. Dad is many things, but he is not gentle. I didn't run to him with scraped knees and first heartbreak; I mean, he saw my first concussion as a badge of honor. He was old-fashioned. Baby-boomers – they're somethin' else. "Lee, you can be honest with Melissa, you can be honest with your mother, and we can call this whole thing off."

"That would kill Mom," I muttered. "She'd never forgive me."

I could feel Dad's eyes boring holes into my head. "It might, but she _would_ forgive you. She wants you to be happy, and she wants you to be with who makes you happy. I guess she's under the impression right now that person is…"

"Right," I sighed. "How the fuck did I let this happen?" I asked miserably.

"You shoulda just broken her heart when it happened. It woulda been embarrassing, but then you wouldn't be in this mess."

Fair point. I should've realized on that night, the moments in which this whole mess started, that what I was really doing was depriving both Melissa and I from ever actually being happy. I should've cleared the whole mess up at the restaurant and booked it to DC. I wish I had a time machine. (Although, it's become clear to me that in both situations, I don't end up with a dog.) "What do you think?" I asked. Dad rolled his eyes, exasperation his most common emotion.

"You know what I think!" He hissed.

"Right," I drawled. "Dad, what would…how would you feel if…"

"If you ended up with Mary?"

"…yeah."

Dad fought back a smile. "It's kinda a strange thought for me," he admitted. "But on the plus side - I'd like the in-laws."

xXx

Something came to me in a dream.

Not to sound all stupid and shit, like some medicine man or whatever, but it totally felt like a message from the universe, and it happened the night before the rest of the family came to town for the wedding. It started out as a memory, then it got all distorted. The memory part was from when we were kids, little kids. Our Mothers, prancing around in high-waisted cigarette pants with – yes – cigarettes in hand and singing along to the music _they_ liked. I saw baby siblings on hips; a bandana rolled into a headband around Aunt Evie's head; Aunt Rose's perm; Aunt Bee's big sweater and black leggings – always a fashion chameleon – and then my own mother, with her big diamond earrings and pearls and the smile that never left her face. Our Moms were showmen, Vaudevillians, making up for our fathers' absence at our get-togethers by making spectacles of themselves.

 _"Like a tribe of gypsies," Evie had dramatically whispered, winking._

 _"'Gypsies' is already plural," Aunt Rose had said. "We're already a tribe." Aunt Evie stuck her tongue out at her._

 _Aunt Bee pressed a big, wet kiss to baby Lisa's face. "What do you call gypsy babies?" She asked, and she and Mom entered into a heated debate about the term, which is not a thing, there is no term for gypsy babies. That's the term – gypsy babies._

 _We were like a little tribe back then, though. Our Moms were moon goddesses, protectors, givers of life; our Fathers were – to us boys – mysterious and what we were aspiring to become. Our Fathers did not dance in the moonlight on the porch. They did not make us etouffee and giant pans of brownies for dessert. They did not treat their sons the same way they treated their daughters – they didn't kiss the tops of their sons' heads. They told us we were becoming good men._

 _Mary's in the dream. Of course she is. At first, I can only see the back of her curly head, blending in with the darkness of the sky, dancing with her mother and my sisters. We didn't care much for each other when we were kids. Boys and girls aren't friends when they're kids, it's like some universal law. Then she turns her head, and the scene changes, and it's no longer a memory but instead us in the here and now. Now it's just us, and our mothers and siblings are gone. It's still night. She's staring at me, and I'm staring back. She's close, and she's far. I reach out to touch her, but either I stop or she's too far away. I'm not sure which. And then I pour my heart out to her._

 _"You know I didn't mean it, right? I didn't mean to ask her to marry me. I didn't mean any of it, ya know," I told her. And then she has the audacity to say,_

 _"Maybe you did."_

I woke up.

xXx

Right. The something that came to me in the dream. I keep leaving parts out. I'm kinda all over the place right now, ya know?

Anyway, I think what Dream Mary was trying to tell me after I told her the whole situation (which I don't think real Mary knows, but I think when you dream of someone it means they're thinking of you, and I'm pretty sure Mary was out in Washington cursing me every which way), was that maybe I was doing this on purpose? Maybe I _was_ trying to come up with excuses. Maybe I was.

But I still didn't know why.

xXx

"Hey, you're weird – you know anything 'bout dreams?"

Joan raised an eyebrow. This was turning into the longest evening of my life. We were sitting around watching a ball game – well, I was, she was mostly flipping through a magazine – after dinner, and I guess I just didn't want to go home yet. Martha and Joan _were_ home. They were staying with our parents for the wedding. "What'd ya dream about, Lee?" She asked me tiredly.

So I told her about my dream. I told her about the memory and about what Mary said, and Joan nodded along, asking questions like, _Was Dad there? Was Melissa there?_ The answer was always no. Joan just nodded and hummed thoughtfully like she was some sort of dream expert, and when I was done, she said, "Well, I'm no expert, but ya know they say that when you dream about somebody, it means they're thinkin' of you."

I rolled my eyes. "I already knew that," I grumbled.

"Ya know, Lee, you're really in a funny little predicament here. You've told Dad, haven't you? I could tell. You guys kept lookin' at each other funny during dinner." I nodded. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Why keep Mom in the dark?"

"You know why."

Joan nodded sagely. She did know why. I think we all knew why, and it was bigger than just pleasing a southern mother. "You really don't need to worry about that anymore. She's here. There's so much _time_ , Lee. You have time to ditch this whole thing and just…take your time!" Joan was grinning widely, leaning on the arm of Dad's chair and just _grinning_ at me. "You're twenty-six. You don't need to be gettin' married. What you need to do – if you're really as in love with her as you say – "

"I am," I whispered. Joan's demeanor took a step back. "I think I'm waiting to see if I can feel that way about Melissa."

Joan's enthusiasm had all but melted away. "Oh."

"She's a good person," I muttered, and she _was_ , she _is_. "And I keep thinkin' that if I just… _wait_ …I'll be able to love her in the way she deserves."

"That's not fair to either of you, Lee. And it's just ridiculous. She deserves someone who's honest with her." There's that honesty thing again. Forget what I said earlier – I'm pretty much the biggest liar I know. And I'm going straight to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars.

"Dad said if I…with Mary, he'd like the in-laws better."

Joan snorted. "I bet he would. Her dad's his best friend, and we're not hillbillies, ya can't marry one of our cousins. Say, you think Two-Bit knows about all this?"

Oh – you bet your ass he did. And the moment he saw me was the moment I started fearing for my life.

XXXXX

 **AN: The amazing thing about writing this story is that the ending has essentially already been written, so getting there is quite the challenge. Ruining lives is hard work, but that's what I guess I do to these characters! So, basically, we're figuring out Lee and Mary's story together :)**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	4. Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!

**Author's Note: Hey! This one's a doozy, but that's gonna be the norm for this story from now on. Thanks for all your continuing support!**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

Ya know, I'd almost forgotten what it was like when all five of us crammed into a rental car together, but driving into Tulsa from the airport brought back all sorts of memories, from Dallas's pointy elbows jabbing into me and Lisa to his and Dad's nonstop chatter to Lisa asking to roll down the windows on the damn freeway and my mother's long-suffering sighs. Yeah – _almost_. What a way to kick off what is sure to be a rotten week, probably the worst of my life. Every time I thought about the wedding on Saturday, I got sick to my stomach. I almost had to ask Dad to pull over the car more than once. We flew through the outer city limits, passing by all the landmarks I remember from this exact same trip when I was a kid, in all its art deco-cowboy glory. Dad always looks a little happier when we arrive, in a nostalgic way. He likes being home. Mom doesn't always mind it, and even with my predicament, I'm sure she's chomping at the bit to see all her friends. She's even still friends with Cherry Valance and all those same girls from high school, except this one woman named Vickie Washburn (nee Harper), who she's told me and Lisa some horror stories about. Girls really can be evil, and in high school especially.

We dumped all our luggage off at Grandma and Grandpa's before Dad whisked us away to go to Uncle Darry and Aunt Jackie's house, which kinda pissed Mom off because she wanted to talk to her parents, but Dad was a man on a mission. Me? I was dreading it. I could only hope Lee wasn't there, which was of course a pipe dream. Maybe Dad hoped that, too, because the closer we got to the house, the whiter Dad's knuckles got.

"I need a goddamn cigarette," he muttered, and Mom just shook her head.

"Could've hung around my parents' a little longer…"

"No," Dad cut off. "'Sides, Pony's already there."

"How do you know that? Did he call?"

"No. I just…know." He tapped his temple. "Got a sixth sense about these things."

They really did.

xXx

Uncle Pony and Aunt Rose were sitting on Uncle Darry's front porch when Dad pulled the car up to the curb. Of course Dad had been right. He, Dallas, and Lisa bounded out of the car to greet them, and I took a deep breath and went a little more slowly, slow enough that Mom had the time to stop me before I got out. Her hand held mine and she looked at me with sad eyes.

"Honey."

"What?" I sighed, not trying to sound snappish, but I was feeling nervous. Mom rubbed circles into my hand with her thumb.

"You okay?"

I thought about it. "Sure," I shrugged. "I'm not a kid anymore," I said, not quite sure why I did. Mom nodded.

"I know. It'll be okay."

Sure.

I think it's safe to say that every gathering we have is essentially a party. I walked in with Mom, looking around warily. This was more than just our family. This was more than all the Curtises and the Randles. There were strangers everywhere, popping out of every nook and cranny it seemed, and it clicked with me that the fiancé must be here, and her family, too. We'd stumbled into the crossfire. I stopped on the front walk, tugging my mother back.

"Nevermind. You can't make me do this," I hissed. She sighed.

"Mary. Be reasonable. I know this is hard for you, honey, but chin up, sweetheart. 'Kay?"

For the first time ever, I wanted to hit my mother. Just…punch her lights out. How could she have any idea of how hard this was? (Okay, sounding whiny again, but whatever.) I just nodded, and I was glad when Aunt Rose stepped in to hug me. I felt instantly ashamed, even though my mother had no idea what I was thinking, but that's how I felt anyway. It barely registered with me what Rose was saying, something about how well I looked or whatever, something very English in that posh accent of hers.

"I think Jackie overdid it on the food," she confided to me and my mother, "but what's new? I'm sure you're all starving, anyways. Bridget, we should probably go introduce ourselves to Mrs. Macdonald. Mary?"

She was asking if I wanted to come with them. I smiled and shook my head. "I think I'm gonna go say hi to Uncle Pony and everybody first."

Dad and his buddies were all clustered together in the front entrance, blocking the door, really. It's like they were freakin' drawn to each other, like magnets. They just knew when and where the others were around. They were whispering to each other, and I knew they weren't planning a fishing trip or a night out. This wasn't supposed to be heard. And I swear I didn't, but I could guess what they were talking about. They stopped when Pony spotted me.

"Hey, kid!" He threw his arms around me, and I hugged back. I got hugs from his brothers and Steve, too, all of them watching me with careful eyes. I felt awkward.

"I think the girls are all out back or somethin'," Darry told me, and I wanted to tell him that I didn't really want to see any of the girls. I didn't want to see Francine and Annie, who would instantly start scheming. I didn't want to see Martha and Joan because god knows what they made of this situation. And I sure didn't want to see _her_.I could only stand to see Lisa. Because she would understand I didn't want to pretend to be excited about wedding chatter. "There's also food."

Yes! Food. Perfect. If I'm eating, I don't have to talk.

I grabbed a plate and loaded up, then found a seat in the sunroom and let people come to me. Dallas and John found me at one point and asked me why I was hiding, but I told them to fuck off and let me be unless they had something productive to add, so then they sat down across from me and started telling me all the ways they were going to torture Lee for his bachelor party. 'Torture' wasn't the word they used, but it's sure what it sounded like to me.

"I'm sure the girls would love your input for Melissa's," Dally winked. John snickered, so I guessed he knew what was up, or at least how I was feeling about all this. I smiled my fakest smile.

"Not sure she'll want me there. We're not exactly _friends_."

"Yeah, but you're part of the family," John shrugged. "That's something."

Oh, it surely was.

I suddenly heard my father's distinctive voice ring out, saying, "C'mon, you should meet my other daughter, Mary. Somethin' tells me y'all will get along just _fine_ …" and I could feel an iciness in my stomach and hell, my _soul_ , and I stood up rod-straight and turned towards his voice.

There she was. Melissa Macdonald. She looked so average. I don't like bashing on other women because, well, hos before bros and all that, but even though she didn't know it, she and I were at war with each other. I tried to look at her in the way that Lee does, in a way that makes her any more than painted plain, a pig with lipstick, but I couldn't. She was all legs and elbows and looked like one of the cheerleaders Daddy and Dally ogled at when they watched OSU games, but without the makeup and skimpy outfit. Or the tits. She had a real Lisa Frank quality to her. A real horse girl. I could tell, having known horse girl extraordinaire Francine Curtis her whole life. And Lisa, she was a cheerleader in high school, mostly because she never ran out of pep, but even Lisa had more of a shape than this chick. There. Just thinking that made me feel a bit better.

"Mary, dahlin'," Dad began in a level tone, "this is Melissa."

Melissa smiled at me and stuck out her hand. "Nice to meet you."

I robotically stuck out my hand and shook. Dad watched on at the awkward exchange, but I couldn't tell if Melissa could sense the awkwardness here. I doubted she knew the full story. "Hi," I deadpanned. "I've, uh, heard a lot about you," I lied, sort of. I knew enough. Melissa smiled wider.

"Really?" She asked, and I nodded. Dad leaned in to say something in my ear.

" _Trust me on this_ ," was all he said, then he patted me on the back and left me and Melissa alone. And as soon as he left, Melissa took in a deep breath and asked cheerfully,

"So! Tell me about yourself, Mary!"

xXx

"So then he says, _'trust me on this_ ', and…waltzes away, just like that."

Annie is used to hearing me bitch about my father, and pretty much the rest of my family, too. She does the same thing with me. Poor Annie has two brothers, who with their combined powers are almost as diabolical as my brother. She needs girls like me and Francine to keep her in touch with the side of herself that isn't always on the lookout for incoming wet willies and other boyish pranks of the like.

I don't know much about how weddings work, so I wasn't sure why this party was happening. Maybe to welcome the family's prodigal son – which was still Ponyboy, even now that he was in his forties. Obviously, he and my father hadn't met Lee's fiancé and her family yet, and I'm sure Uncle Darry and Aunt Jackie (Aunt Jackie especially) were particularly eager to host this get-together so that could happen. It all felt like a political game. James has told me stories about parties that weren't really parties; they were under that guise, but it was all for making connections, getting ahead. I suppose it pays to know a senator's son, and may pay even more to date one. Sitting there like I was, feeling as lousy as I did, that option was becoming more and more feasible to me.

"He must have his reason," Annie said gently. We were both looking out at the party, watching everyone have a good time. The Macdonalds were sure a large family, and all of us together was quite the crowd, but the Curtis household could handle it. They'd proven that much over the years. "Ya know, Franny and I worked on 'im."

"Lee, you mean?"

Annie nodded. "We, uh…Mary, it's _you_ ," she whispered. "It is. That's why this makes no sense. His sisters…well, they think it has something to do with what happened with Jackie last year, why this has all been such a whirlwind."

"But why her?" I asked, drumming my fingers against my red Solo cup. I wanted some more cheese and crackers, but I wasn't feeling brave enough to emerge from my perch. Annie seemed to waffle a bit.

"Mary, we all saw…well, that boy you're with. What's-his-name. _All_ of us."

"His name is James Williams, Senator Williams of Massachusetts' son." James, I had to admit, did look a bit like Lee. "It was a chance meeting."

"We've seen the two of you on TV."

"Not like I chose that. It's not my fault that…that cameras follow those sorts of people."

Annie sighed. "Mary I think this situation is much more complicated than we really know, so many…mixed signals, and I think it's gonna have to be you who gets to the bottom of it cuz, well, he'll talk to you. Wanna know what we should do 'til then?"

"What's that?"

Annie tapped her cup against mine. "C'mon, Mary." Annie suddenly produced and proceeded to wave a six pack in front of my face. "Let's get skunked, sugah."

xXx

Oh, god. I'm reminded every time I drink with Annie of why I don't drink with Annie.

xXx

My parents are singing.

 _Singing!_

Both of them!

I hate what Oklahoma does to them.

"Goooooood mornin', Mary dahlin'," Dad paused, greeting me. I'm the second-to-last one up. My brother is surely still asleep. Dallas sleeps like the dead.

"Good morning," I mumbled as I slumped into a seat at the kitchen table. My grandparents are nowhere in sight, so I assume they've already headed for the country club. My little sister, Lisa, is sitting next to me. We're waiting on breakfast. That's what Mom and Dad are up to while they sing the score to – I shit you not – _Oklahoma!_ And I want to disintegrate into the floor.

"Good morning," Lisa tried, obviously nervous to test the waters but doing so anyway. I grunted at her.

"Hey," I said. "Were you up first?"

Lisa nodded. "I saw when Gramma and Grandpa left. They said they'll be back for dinner."

I nodded, but I also wasn't really listening. I was trying to tune out my entire family. Mom set a paper towel-covered plate of bacon on the table while Dad whistled along to her singing. ( _"Many a new day will dawn…"_ ) Mom can carry a tune. Dad can accompany her just fine. I just wasn't in the mood for it.

"You guys are being too loud," I mumbled, and I don't think anybody except for maybe Lisa heard me. But if she did, she didn't say anything.

"Lisa, baby, you want a bagel?" Daddy asked.

"With peanut butter," Lisa said.

"Alright. Mary, you want one?"

I shrugged, but his back was turned to me, so he didn't see. "Sure. Thanks." Talking was still hard this early in the morning. I don't think it was exactly very early, though. Dad popped two halves in the toaster and pushed them down. Whispered something to Mom about Dallas, and she absently nodded. I blearily blinked my eyes. The sun…it is… _too bright_. I watched my mother move effortlessly around the kitchen, trailing off into a hum, her and Dad in perfect harmony as always. I know that Mom and I look alike, but she's floating around in a delicate baby pink robe, and every movement she makes seems deliberate, like an intricate dance. Dad is her partner, lifting up his arms with a pan still in his hands so she can pass under them to get to the fridge. I wonder if Dad's buddies are like this with _their_ wives. I wouldn't really know. I haven't paid them as much attention. Then I wondered if someday, this is what Lee and Melissa Macdonald would be like with each other, and I almost threw up.

A few moments later, there was a fast thumping of feet, and Lisa and I exchanged looks – there was Dallas. He entered the kitchen just as mine and Lisa's bagels popped, and he instantly reached for them. Mom smacked away his hand.

"Those aren't for you," she said.

" _What?_ Who are they for, then?"

"For those of us that have been _awake_ ," Dad said, grabbing Dally by the shoulders and leading him to the table. "Sit. Stay a while, Dallas," he grinned, and even Dallas didn't seem up to Dad's antics this morning because he rolled his eyes. Dad didn't see.

"Good morning," Lisa said to him, too. Dallas was nicer than I was when he acknowledged her.

"Hey, Lisa," he said, absentmindedly pricking his finger, drawing a little spot of blood. He suddenly looked up. "Hey – where are Gramma and Grandpa?"

Mom and Dad set food down on the table and then sat down. Dallas instantly started to dig in. My stomach was still waking up, rocky from a little too much drinking the night before, so I just grabbed an orange and started peeling it. "Clubbin'," Dad deadpanned. Dallas raised an eyebrow.

"At this hour? Awfully early…"

"They're at the country club," Mom sighed, a bit exasperated. "They'll be back by dinner."

"So, like, four 'o' clock."

Dad snorted, but Mom just rolled her eyes. I decided now would be as good a time as any to bring up what I'd heard last night. Because speaking of four 'o' clock… "I heard you come in last night, Dad."

Dad shot me a look, eyebrow already cocked like he'd had it armed and ready. "Oh?" He asked. "How the tables have turned," he said sarcastically, "you askin' me 'bout where I was last night."

I shook my head. I was almost twenty-five years old and didn't live at home anymore, and here Dad was, acting like I was still fifteen. "I'm not asking anything," I said innocently. "Just saying I heard you come in."

"Funny you bring that up, sweetie, because it just so happens that the guys and I were talkin' 'bout _you_ just 'fore I left."

"Oh?" I asked sweetly. "What about?"

I knew what about. I knew _damn_ well what about.

"Can I guess?" Dallas asked. He had a mouth full of bacon, and Mom gently reprimanded her fully-grown son to not talk with his mouth full. So he swallowed and asked again, " _Can I guess?"_

"Dallas," Dad warned, and he backed off. "'Sides, it ain't me with the hangover."

Oof. That was fair; point one for Dad.

"Speakin' of, are you okay?"

My whole family was now looking at me. They'd put the meal on pause and had their intense focus set on me. I shifted uncomfortably, still picking at my orange, wondering if maybe a piece of toast or some bacon might not be such a bad idea. Or coffee. I'm a nurse; bigtime coffee drinker. I tried to avoid thinking about what I knew they were asking about. "Fine," I said in a short, clipped tone. The four of them seemed to lean in closer, all cocked eyebrows and disbelieving stares and witty retorts at the ready in the event of my next inevitable misfire. Keeping up with this family's antics could be exhausting. "Really," I insisted.

"Interesting," Dallas mused. "Cuz that's not what Vinny and Tommy told me that Annie told them."

I rolled my eyes. "When the hell did you have time to talk to them?" And great – Annette's running her mouth. Just what I need.

"Doesn't matter."

"Joan and Martha told me – "

I slammed my hand down on the table, rattling the dishware. All four of them started, and I sighed and covered my cheeks with my hands. "I don't care what anybody said. I don't care what any of them said," I said miserably, dropping my hands into my lap. "Daddy, do they know about me and Lee?"

Mom cleared her throat and looked down at her lap. I was starting to get the feeling that she didn't like talking about this subject. Daddy pursed his lips. "They do."

I'd ruined breakfast. My stomach churned. Dallas mumbled, _"Well, shit_ ," and that pretty well summed up the situation.

xXx

Sundays aren't a day for mail, but Grandfather still handed me something he'd found taped to the front door. "Secret admirer?" He asked as I read. I'd recognize Lee's distracted handwriting anywhere.

"Something like that." I stood and kissed his cheek. "Tell Mom and Daddy I won't be out too late."

xXx

"Hi, Lee."

This was the first time I'd seen him eight months. His rogueish smirk made me weak at the knees. "Hey, Mary."

I sat down at his table and set my bulky purse on the ground. He watched me with interested eyes. A waiter came over, and I felt like an idiot for ordering a glass of water in a bar, but I didn't want a repeat of last night. Even Lee seemed amused. "Alcoholism runs in my family, ya know," I told him in my defense. Because it did. On my father's side.

"I know," he said, because of course he did. We all knew nearly everything about each other. "But you're not an alcoholic. That title belongs to your old man."

My heart felt all twisted up. That wasn't exactly a secret, but that didn't mean I liked hearing it any better. And it wasn't like my father was a mean old drunk or anything, and as much as he and I have our disagreements, he's a good man, and I know he loves all of us. He's just…yeah. "I'm just being careful. Annie got me fuckin' sloshed last night."

Lee's smile grew even bigger, but still holding back. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I sighed. "And I'm sure you can guess the reason why, and I'm sure that reason has something to do with why we're here right now. So, Lee Curtis – whaddyah got to say for yourself?"

I crossed my arms and waited. All Lee's note had said was when and where to meet him, but like I said, there isn't much we don't know about each other, him and I especially. So I waited him out. I had a million things to say, but I wanted to watch him squirm and try to come up with an excuse this time. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, especially not _this_ woman.

"You're gonna laugh at me."

"I'm sure I will."

And I surely did, once he told me how exactly he'd gotten himself into this mess, the poor puppy lover, but then it settled with me that it was eight months later and he hadn't backed out, and that it had been eight months since the last time I'd seen him, with only a phone call or two in between, and I had to wonder just what the hell it was we were doing. He clearly wanted to marry Miss-wannabe-Oklahoma. If he hadn't figured that out in eight months, then he was stupider than I thought he was.

"What the hell, Lee."

"I know."

"No, I mean _what the hell?_ "

"And I mean, _I know_."

I threw up my hands, completely and utterly done. "Lotta good that does me, Lee Curtis."

"Mary."

I loved the way he said my name, every time he said it. It's like he _knew_ how to say it, intrinsically. He had a command on it that sent shivers up and down my spine and made my stomach feel all warm. Fuck him for making me feel like that when I was supposed to be pissed at him. "Lee?"

"I thought you'd moved on."

 _Fuck_.

xXx

I decided that from that point on, for the rest of the week until this wedding, my time would be best spent with our tribe's own version of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. As the oldest daughter of the twelve kids, I could step in and fill the space Francine's mother would have occupied, had she not run out. I was a pretty good cards player, anyways, and could be catty with the best of them. So while Dallas was plotting Lee's bachelor party with Vinny and Tommy and Mike and John, and while Lisa was out gallivanting with Joan doing girly shit arm-in-arm, I tagged along with my mother to go to the Randle's house and listen in on the family gossip, while doggedly trying to pretend that I wasn't a probable subject of said gossip.

"You probably have better things to do than hang around a bunch of old ladies," Mom said with a smile on her face, like she thought she was oh-so-funny. I rolled my eyes.

"You're not that old, Mom."

"Half a century," she shrugged.

"Congratulations," I deadpanned. Mom had taken over her childhood home's kitchen last night to make a sweet potato pie, which I was now charged with carrying since I'd come along.

For an "old lady," Mom sure did have a lot of pep in her step, striding up the front walk and the porch steps and just letting herself in the house because she knew that she was expected. Mom and Dad have that in common – they just assume they're welcome, Mom because she had that entitled upbringing, and Dad because he thinks he's the life of the party. It's kinda annoying, but they're always right to follow that particular instinct. No one ever turns them away.

"Oh, goodness, that's Mary Mathews," Aunt Jackie drawled when she saw me. I gave her a tight smile and resisted the urge to tell her that her son was a rake. I set the pie down on the counter and sat down at the kitchen table. Evie was pouring coffee with generous amounts of cream and sugar – none of them took it black – to go with the pie. The kitchen was very cozy, homey; fall is a good season, very aesthetically pleasing, and October is the best month, what with Halloween and my birthday and all.

"It certainly is," I said. "Aunt Jackie, I bet you're just over the moon right now."

"Don't get her started," Evie interjected, and Mom shot me what would probably be the first of many warning looks. "It's been the only thing she's been talking about since February, rubbin' all our faces in it."

"What?" Jackie tried playing coy. "I'm just excited for my son."

"Uh-huh," Aunt Rose drawled, sliding her eyes over to her friend. "No one likes a gloat, Jacqueline."

"And no one likes uppity pricks, Rosalind, but we can't all get what we want, can we?" Jackie retorted, and instead of sparring, Rose just laughed.

"Creole," she said lowly.

"Limey," Jackie shot back. And that was that.

"It's days like this where I miss smoking," Evie sighed, lowering herself into her seat across from me and next to Mom. "It just feels like the perfect moment for one."

"Well, I don't know about you, but I don't exactly miss the lingering scent of nicotine in all my clothes," Mom said, busy cutting perfectly portioned slices of pie and doling them out. One of them had made homemade whipped cream, with what looked like little flecks of cinnamon.

"You've never smoked cigarettes," I said.

"Yeah, but everyone else did. Your father did." Does. As in, present day, still does it. This seems to be common knowledge to everyone in my family except for Mom. I think even Tony, Dallas' best friend, knows. I know Jenny knows. When Mom's out of the house, Dad will sit on the back porch for a while and just…smoke. At least, that's what he did when I was still living at home. And Dallas. Dad can hide shit pretty good, is what I'm getting at here. "Smells horrible."

"Just brings back a lot of memories," Evie went on. "Ya know, I smoked through both of my pregnancies. When younger gals at the salon hear that, they're appalled, but it's not like my kids are bedridden, asthmatic sea monkeys."

"It was a different time," Rose shrugged.

"Doctor told me with Mary and Dallas that I could smoke to relieve stress, but I can't stand the taste anyways."

Sometimes I wonder if all these women could talk about was family life: pregnancies, child rearing, the trials and triumphs of marriage; tips for getting baby spit-up stains out of clothes and trading recipes for easy weeknight dinners. For a group of progressive women, they were a bit stuck in the past. All of us had grown up, moved on, and here they were talking about being pregnant, something none of them had been since Mom had given birth to Lisa nineteen years ago.

"Mary, your mama's been tellin' us that you've been seein' somebody," Jackie sing-songed. "So now that you're here, we _demand_ that you spill!"

Oh, good God.

"Yeah, honey – _give_ ," Evie tacked on, making a grabbing motion with her free hand.

I looked over at Mom, who looked particularly pleased with herself. I was begin to suspect that I'd gotten caught up in one of her Mom-schemes. I'm sure she thought she was just doing what was best for me, trying to get me to focus on a guy who was chasing my tail and _wasn't_ engaged, but it still made me feel even a bit more sour towards her. I forced a smile.

"Sure. For starters – any of you guys see the pictures of us together at the White House's Fourth of July celebration?"

xXx

"Mary, when was the last time we did something together, just you an' me?"

I shot Dad a funny look. "Dunno, Daddy. What do you and I usually do together, anyways? I feel like whenever I see you anymore, there isn't any time for that sort of thing."

Dad sometimes gets like this, especially after talking to his family. Seeing his mother and sister always makes him a bit softer for a little while – and Mom says that growing up around all that estrogen didn't prepare him to raise it. It's one of the few things she and I disagree on. This time around, he's asking the question while I'm sitting at my grandparents' kitchen table once again, sitting under lights that haven't been updated since the sixties, flipping through another gossip magazine. I'd found this one in my mother's old room, which Lisa and I always shared when we were here. It was thirty-year-old goss, but the pictures were fabulous. Dad sat down next to me.

"You're hardly ever home anymore," he shrugged, probably a bit of a lament. He clasped his hands together and started twirling his thumbs. I set down my magazine.

"Are you trying to get at something?"

"Oh…no," he lilted, waving a hand and shaking his head. He definitely was. "Dahlin', no. I just thought you might wanna…get yer mind off things." He shrugged and gave me a kind look. It made me feel funny.

"Are you with me on this?" I asked.

He knew exactly what I meant, and exactly why I was asking. "'Course. Just like I am with so many of your predicaments and schemes. You're my baby, baby."

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Yeah. Guess I am."

"But it can't be me that does anything, ya know. I hate seein' yer heart broke, kid, but Darry and Jackie would kill me. I'd ruin forty years of friendship – know what I'm sayin'? This is up to the two of you." Dad grinned his famous grin. "But I'm in your corner, babygirl."

xXx

We looked at pictures together.

Of Mom when she was younger, of him and Mom together. Home from their San Francisco trip thirty-three years ago; candids and pictures where they didn't look too happy to be posed; wearing bellbottom jeans and tinted sunglasses; with their friends – Mom with her gaggle of Yentas, and Mom _and_ Dad with the people we consider family; at their wedding; with me. That seemed to be where that particular album ended, with me, but it lasted us long enough because Dad remembered the story behind every picture.

"Your mom and I know a few things about rocky romances," he confided. "I think we had to deal with a few more…external factors, but. Ya know. Ain't like it's always been easy for us. Yer mama's dumped me more than once, actually," he laughed. I smiled a little despite myself.

"Yeah, but only one of those times ever really lasted."

"That's true," he allowed. "But she threatens me with it almost every time we fight." I felt his eyes on me. "Are you scared of what she'll think?"

"Think of what?"

"What she'll think if you and Lee derail this wedding."

Without knowing there was even a nail, he hit it. We got quiet, letting this oldies station fill the space with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Reverend Gary Davis and their gospel singing. I looked away from my father and stared at a picture of Mom holding me on the front porch of the very house we were in, then an appropriately placed picture of Lee and I side-by-side. "Maybe," I whispered, not having even considered that possibility.

"Your mom and her friends, all these ladies, they like order," Dad told me. "And they've got a set of rules in their heads that they don't think should be broken. Society girls, each in their own way. Hell, I grew up with Evie, same shitty neighborhood, and even she's got all these _ideas_ about how things like this should go. I just want you to know that Jackie might be pissed at ya if the two of you run off together, but the rest of us'll be backin' ya, even if we do end up wasting all that food."

I coughed out a watery laugh, not knowing I was crying. "You, uh, sure have a way with words, Daddy."

"That I do. Really, Mary, I got your back on this. You just say the word, and I'll go kick this kid's ass. I'll do it! I might even do it without any provokin'!"

I laughed again. "God, _stop_."

"Fine," he said petulantly, crossing his arms. It was odd having Dad on my side for once, but I couldn't say I minded. I sighed.

"They can be so old-fashioned."

"They've got themselves set in their ways, and that can be hard to break away from. Yer mama was a real prude when I met her, so she's made considerable progress!"

I suppose. I loved her, but it wasn't just her; Dad was the one who noticed when my skirts started getting shorter. I really didn't like disappointing my parents, not at all, and I've only felt like more and more of a disappointment the older I've gotten. Why do I always bring home the worst boys? Why did I become a nurse instead of a doctor? Now, the newest question would be _why the hell did you ruin a perfectly good wedding?_

xXx

I asked him before I went to bed why he introduced me to Melissa. I found him sitting on the patio with in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I thought about what Lee said earlier, and what I had agreed with. But my father didn't look like some old drunk. He had long hair and a beard and scars and dressed like a cowboy; he was dusty and loose and could go from zero to a hundred in a matter of seconds, but he didn't scare me, and it had never occurred to me to look at him through a lens that would. For those of us that were close to him, there was nothing to be afraid of. But it also occurred to me that it was too late to change anything about him. It must drive my mother insane.

"Avoidin' her's not the answer," he told me. He took another pull of his drink. It was harder stuff than any of the rest of us liked, and he drank it like water.

"So you were having me check out my competition."

Dad laughed, but shook his head. "Naw. Not exactly. She's a… _fine_ girl, Mary."

"So?"

 _"So_ , much as I'm on yer side, I need you to realize that she ain't evil. He picked her for a reason, and that ain't her fault. So don't go hatin' on her."

I pursed my lips and tried not to cry. I was through with tears. "Did they tell you what really happened?" I asked. Dad took a drag off his cigarette.

"You mean, when he asked her?"

"I mean when he _didn't_ ask her and she thought he did."

Dad clearly thought it was funny, because his chest started shaking with silent laughter. I wanted to scream. None of this was funny. But I guess it was. Because it kinda was. "Yeah," he said, voice weak with laughter, "I know. We _all_ know. Come mornin', so will your mother – she'll get a real kick outta this one."

Fantastic.

"Daddy," I said quietly, and he took in a deep breath to get himself under control because now I was being emotionally vulnerable and all that. "He never meant to ask her."

"I know," he sighed. He snuffed out his cigarette and grabbed my hand. "But that hasn't stopped him from stayin' with her."

XXXXX

 **AN: These chapters are gonna have a bit more of a flow to them and be a bit longer because we're really into the story now, and I'm planning on ten chapters.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	5. Bless Yore Beautiful Hide

**Author's Note: This chapter gets a bit dark, with mentions of attempted suicide. It doesn't last forever, but if that's a sensitive topic for you, please be aware.**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

Us kids, we keep secrets.

Our mothers keep bigger ones.

But our dads? Ho, _buddy_.

xXx

When Uncle Two-Bit saw me at the party, he shot me his widest Will Rogers grin and strode over to me. There was something undeniably unsettling in his demeanor, even though he was smiling at me. Two-Bit had a smile you could almost _hear_. He clapped my shoulder and shook my hand, and I started smiling back, thinking I might be in the clear, when he leaned in and started whispering in my ear.

"You're lucky there's people around, or I'd be beatin' on yer ass right now. You and I are gonna have words, kid." I nodded mutely and then he pulled back, still grinning, and said in a much louder voice, "Well, I think congratulations are in order, kid! I'd like to meet the lucky lady."

I laughed nervously. "Right! Uh, Melissa?" I could see Two-Bit studying her as she made her way over to us from the yard. I tried to examine her the way he clearly was, to try and figure out what I saw in her. She was taller than Mary, a bit leggy, with tanned skin and very white teeth that made for a dentist-approved smile, and dirty blonde hair. Two-Bit crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at me. I just shrugged. "Melissa, this is my Uncle Two-Bit, Two-Bit Mathews."

This was the moment of truth. Most people in Tulsa knew who this joker was, even though he didn't live here anymore. I'd bet money he went to high school with my future in-laws. But that didn't mean Melissa wouldn't trip over her own feet here. "Two-Bit?" She repeated. She looked at me funny. "I thought you only had two uncles on your father's side?"

"I do," I confirmed. "But I actually have four."

Melissa was now looking at both of us funny, and Two-Bit decided to spare her. He gave her a more tired smile. "I'm an old friend of this dumbass's old man." He held out his hand. "And the name's really Keith, but I can't have you goin' around callin' me that, understand?" Melissa looked a little confused still, but she nodded. "You were talkin' to one of my daughters, Lisa."

"Is she the brunette?"

"Nah, the little one who can't shut her trap to save her life."

Melissa looked over her shoulder. The brunette was Annie, and both she and Lisa were watching us now. Neither of them looked very happy with me. "Oh!" she said. "Yeah, she's sweet." That was one word for her, the little hellion. "I'm sorry, I feel like I'm still getting to know everybody."

"You mean this kid hasn't introduced you around?" Two-Bit asked incredulously. "Well, allow me! C'mon, you should meet my other daughter, Mary. Somethin' tells me y'all will get along just _fine_ …"

Oh, _god_. He was already punishing me. Two-Bit was clearly charming Melissa, like he does with everybody, and she had no idea the trap she was walking into. I knew Mary wouldn't make a scene, but I knew exactly what Dad's buddy was doing, and that was turning her against me. Fuck, fuck, fuckity- _fuck!_ I may have looked calm on the outside (I hope), but inside, I was screaming. I was throwing a full-blown tantrum. If I opened my mouth too early, this whole party would have heard my animalistic wails.

My eyes briefly tracked their path. I lost them after a few moments because I refused to move or follow, and could hear them in the sunroom, could hear Mary's voice mingling with theirs and Johnny and Dallas'. I was gripping my beer so tightly I was sure it would shatter.

I hid.

xXx

 _Saturn Room, 7?_

 _\- Lee_

xXx

Melissa told me she thought Mary was really nice, but maybe a bit strange.

xXx

I think you deserve to know what all this talk about my mother means.

xXx

It was about a year ago.

And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it was cancer. You think it was cancer, don't you? Well, it wasn't cancer. Ha! How's _that_ for subverting expectations? No, no, it was (accidentally) attempted suicide.

Well – geeze. I mean, none of us have really said it out loud. Ya know? I think maybe because none of us really has all the answers yet, whether it was actually purposeful or just an accident, like she said. We're probably not ever going to get them. And I know this has all taken a dark turn, but like I said, it's not something any of us have really talked about. It all started so innocuously. My mother has been an insomniac for nearly her whole life, according to her. It apparently drove everyone from her parents to the family maid to the old man insane. So if anyone asks, the official story is that the sleeping pills were to help her with that, though why she waited this long to try something like that is a mystery still.

If my mother has her demons – like so many of us do – she's never let on to them. She talks fondly of her childhood in Louisiana, of being nannied by a large black woman, of the food, and the shopping in New Orleans. I've never heard her say a bad word about any of us. She goes out, has friends. She may have been a little unfulfilled professionally, but if that was true, it didn't seem to dog at her. So it hadn't made any sense.

All of Mom and Dad's family and friends came when it happened. Her parents, her older brother and his wife. Dad's brothers. Steve and Two-Bit and Evie and Bee and Rose. They all came. It's what they do – they swarm. They can just sense when something bad has happened, or when they're needed in the wake of something tragic, or at least something confusing and scary. They all came. There was no question to it, either, no hesitation. They give without expectation of something in return. Mom's friends and her sister-in-law sat around in the living room like they were keeping vigil, entertaining my sisters with endless games of cards and stories and reminding them gently that they needed to eat something because our mother needed us and we needed our energy, yada yada yada. I hung around with Dad's buddies and my uncles, minus the old man, of course, because he was with Mom, and sometimes a buddy of mine would drop in, or Vinny and Tommy. Mostly, though, I just sat while they talked and drank. They didn't force me to say anything, which I was grateful for. Listening to them was sometimes hard enough, but their voices mingling together was such a familiar sound, their togetherness such a familiar force that regardless of what they were talking about, it was a comfort.

"Did she seem off to you?" I remember Pony asking Sodapop and Steve in a hushed voice. He and his family lived in Chicago, so he hadn't been around to notice if there had been any changes.

"If she was, she hid it real well," Soda had whispered. The four of them just sighed and each took a drag off their cigarettes in perfect unison. As always – more in-synch than a bunch of girl-friends' periods.

For as much as the gloomy specter of death hangs over our family, it always seems to startle the shit out of our dads. Like they're used to it, but they never see it coming. This time especially, since Mom didn't actually bite it. The four of them – because I really don't remember seeing much of my own dad during that time – seemed almost uncomfortable with all of it, twitchy and itchy in their own skin. Like they were just _waiting_ for it. Like if it actually happened, then they could finally be useful. They didn't know what to do with maybes and almosts – they were men of action and _this is happening right now_ and _I'm here and I can fix this_. They couldn't console my father because at the time, there didn't seem to be much to console him for. I think they felt pretty useless.

When I finally got to see Mom, she was sitting up in her hospital bed, face and hair fully done because god knows she wouldn't be caught – well, dead – looking any other way, even coming back from the brink like she was. She didn't look like someone who had almost died, and she wouldn't talk about it. "I just can't _wait_ to get home," she kept saying, smiling at the three of us. When she slept, Joan cried because the whole thing just freaked her out. It freaked me and Martha out, too, her lively attitude in the face of her own pending mortality, the fate she'd managed to avoid for the time being.

It was a lot.

Aunt Evie told the three of us that she used to work in the same hospital Mom was in, working in the gift shop and delivering flowers. But what made the situation even _weirder_ was that even if Evie worked there, past tense, Mom worked there, in the here and now. Nurse Jackie. That's how she and Dad met. Dad had fallen off a ladder at work and came away with a concussion and her phone number. So I couldn't imagine how weird it was for her coworkers.

When Mom finally got home, it really was as if the entire situation had never happened. She came home wearing a bright mustard-yellow dress and a smile, and she took Dad's arm as he led her back inside, the two of them whispering to each other while us three kids trailed behind them, shaking our heads.

"Pretty sure she's a robot," Martha grumbled, astonished in the worst way. "She's just so _cavalier_ about the whole thing." Which was funny to hear Martha say because she was usually with her on just about everything. Guess this was one of the exceptions. The three of us sat on the front porch steps, not ready to go in yet and face the mob that we could hear from outside.

"She's tryin' to make everything go back to normal," I said sagely, hoping to display some oldest sibling wisdom.

"D'ya think she did it on purpose?" Joan asked quietly, ignoring my gem. This whole ordeal had really subdued her. In turn, her question subdued Martha and I, and I looked at my younger sister who just looked at me with blank, sad eyes. She was asking me, too, the same question. I sighed.

"I don't know," I said miserably. "It doesn't make any sense to me cuz I don't see why she would. Nobody can figure a reason she'd want to. But…I don't know. I wanna believe it was an accident, and 'til she says otherwise, that's what I'm stickin' with."

It wasn't the answer either of them wanted. To be honest, it wasn't the answer I wanted, either, but it was the best one I had, and it's _still_ the best one I have. Once the Mathews and Uncle Pony and Aunt Rose and everybody went home, once it was obvious Mom was in the clear, Mom and Dad seemed to just…move on. We expected that from Mom, but Dad was the sort of guy to face issues head-on. There was no problem he couldn't take on, and he usually went after Mom if the problem had something to do with her. But not this time, no. If anything, that made everything feel even _less_ normal.

There's a reason I'm telling you all this. And it's not to make you feel sorry for me.

xXx

 _Dinner this time. Won't tell you where here because I'm a woman of mystery, so when you call my grandparents', ya know, ask for me. That is, if I'm not waiting by the phone ;)_

 _\- Mary_

xXx

I obviously couldn't pick her up, so she met me at the restaurant. We'd both come up with bullshit alibis, even if maybe we didn't have to because in theory, this could be a totally platonic meeting. But our parents, at the very least – minus my mother, perhaps - knew better. I'd been on dates like this before, where I was the first one and the hostess had led me to my table, and I sat waiting, hoping to not get stood up. It had happened only once before – me getting stood up, that is. It's just one of those things that happens, I guess. Vinny tells a story about getting stood up that's pretty funny – Tommy tells one that'll make yer skin crawl, oddly enough. Those guys get themselves in the weirdest situations.

"Hey."

I looked up. The first thought I had was what had her family thought when she slinked out in that black dress? I stood up and awkwardly pulled out her chair and tried to remember the last time we went on a date, if ever. Or did we just sneak around? Mary was watching me with those eyes of hers and a funny look on her face that made me feel…mad?

"What're you lookin' at?" I grumbled, and she just chuckled and shook her head.

"Not much," she said smartly. "I really oughta stop letting myself get set up on these blind dates. They all end the same way."

I took a drink of water to hide that I was smirking. "Oh yeah? And how do they end?"

"Flaccidly."

I snorted. Count on Mary to, uh, give it right to ya. She seemed pretty pleased with herself and coolly sipped her water. I was about to dump mine right over my head just to cool myself off and convince myself that this wasn't some weird dream scenario that my brain had drummed up. Because that notion was winning. "Do you want somethin' besides water?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine."

"Ya sure?"

"Yea-uh."

I drummed my fingers. "Weather's been nice."

"Hope it stays that way. Wouldn't want rain on your wedding day."

Ouch. That was obviously a lot meaner than it sounded. Everyone knows what rain on your wedding day means. "Right."

She leveled me with another cool stare. "We just gonna make small talk the whole time, or are we gonna get down to business?"

"What business?"

"Oh, c' _mon_. You know. We've hardly talked about it – "

"We've talked enough," I said, sounding a bit more cruel than I'd intended to, but she didn't back down. I liked that about her. Mary was a fighter, and she'd fight with me, even though I hated to do it. And not just because she always wins. "At least, we have for now," I added more gently. "Can we just pretend for a little while that I haven't completely screwed everything up and that we're just out for dinner? Please." That was probably asking a lot of her, and I felt bad for it, but I honestly didn't know who I was these days, and therefore didn't understand half of my actions.

"Alright," she said easily. "Let's have dinner, then."

xXx

Let me just say that I hope I didn't know anybody in that restaurant and that if I did, none of them saw me, saw _us_. Because in the words of ten-year-old me whenever I saw my parents kiss: _yuck_.

xXx

I walked her to her car; it was the least I could do considering I couldn't drop her off at home. I wondered how she could stand the autumn cold in just that dress, with its little tiny straps holding it up against her body. I was going to give her my coat, but then we were standing at her rental and it seemed kind of pointless.

"Lee?"

"Yeah?"

Mary sighed as she fiddled with her keys, but didn't unlock the car. "Dad said something interesting to me the other night, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it."

Uh-oh. If I knew one thing, it was that our dads were protective of their daughters, more than they were protective of their sons. Dad's always kept a real watchful eye out for Martha and Joan, but was all buddy-buddy with me. I knew Two-Bit and Dallas had a similar relationship, but Two-Bit was even _more_ volatile when it came to Mary and Lisa. He and Dad were probably quite the duo to behold in their glory days. Wouldn't want them beatin' on my ass. I'm sure askin' for it, though. "What's that?" I asked, trying to stay sounding casual.

She sighed. "He said…he said that even if you didn't _mean_ for any of this to happen, you're not exactly stopping it." She pursed her lips. "You know?"

I nodded tentatively. "Uh…yee-a-uh…um." I rubbed the back of my neck. "It's just…I'm tryin' to do the right thing here, but I don't know what that is yet. I don't know if I should go through with it or not."

"You've been engaged since February – what's taking you so long? Conversely, why are the two of you getting married so _soon?_ "

I smirked. "Hey – just cuz yer parents were engaged forever doesn't mean we _all_ gotta do it that way."

"Right," Mary snorted. "You're taking your parents' approach. Wait – you haven't…she's not…?"

"No!" I said, surprised. "C'mon, don't ya think the baby'd be here by now if that was the case?"

"Not if it had happened between now and the engagement!"

I barked a laugh for no good reason at all. "Mary, I've been thinkin' about this a lot."

"Oh, really? Doesn't seem to have done you much good."

She made one of those faces, the kind that says _You know I'm right, you giant fucking dumbass. I've officially fucking owned you_. "Right," I sighed, my breath puffing in front of my face and shoving my hands into my pockets. Mary seemed to take a little pity on me.

"Get in for a second."

"Okay."

I got into her car. She flicked on the dome light, which didn't really do much, but I guess it was kinda cozy. Aesthetically speaking, of course. I always thought as a kid that it was cool to drive at night with the lights on in the car. Now I realize that it's a pain in the ass that keeps me from seeing the road real well. She pulled down her visor and looked into her mirror, maybe touching up her lipstick or checking her teeth. Then she flipped it back up with a snap and leaned back in her seat, looking positively comfortable as she stared at me. I leaned back in my own seat and stared back at her.

"I think we're a little lost in translation here," she said quietly. "Ya know?" I nodded – I knew. "I think we always have been. Ever since we were kids, even. All that sneaking around we did…do you really think it was necessary? I mean, if we'd just…just been honest with ourselves and everyone else, maybe this wouldn't be happening. And maybe we got so caught up in the cover-up and the…the _adrenaline_ of it or whatever, that we never really stopped to consider anything long-term, how we really felt. Like, we're too afraid to get past a certain stage in the relationship to see if what we have is really real because we're afraid that nothing's going to be there. We like the veneer. Do you think there's a veneer? That…that all of this" – she gestured to the space between us – "is superficial?"

That was a lot to think about. I don't know if I'd ever considered it like that, but it was clear to me that she had. I sighed and turned in my seat to face her better. "I guess we've never really gotten the chance to try. It's like the whole thing revolves around our parents' schedules and whenever the hell they decide to get together. Know what I mean?" She nodded, then I went on, "I dunno. Maybe you're right. All I know is that I like bein' with you. I mean, I like bein' with a lot of people, but I don't wanna kiss Vinny, ya know?"

She laughed, and it sounded like the real thing. So I let myself smile. Her right hand was resting on the console between us, and I, feeling _way_ too bold, grabbed it, hoping to God I hadn't reached out too fast or grabbed her too hard. Didn't want to look desperate and creepy. I fully expected her to yank her hand back, but she kept it there, just staring down at our hands, intertwining her fingers with mine. "D'you wanna kiss me right now?" She asked, still not looking at me, still looking down her nose at our hands. I nodded.

"Yeah," I said simply.

"And…we're not talkin' kiss-your-mother-on-the-cheek here, right?"

"Oh, no, no. No, I'm talkin' the whole enchilada, tongue and all."

Mary laughed, biting back on her lip too late to try to stop it. "You're so gross."

"You love it."

"Shut up."

(She totally did.)

"You can," she said. "As long as there's tongue."

I snorted, but then it hit me that she was serious and I looked at her wide-eyed and stupid. One second, she was staring at me expectantly, and the next we were leaning over and meeting in the middle, Frenching like a couple of hormone-crazed teenagers. Which, I mean, is definitely a position we'd been in before. Summer of…'91, maybe '90, I drove her out in my pickup to the middle of nowhere and got to third base. I missed that truck. Lot of good memories.

She tasted like whatever wine she'd ended up drinking after she'd figured water wasn't cutting it anymore. I wondered if she was getting undertones of bourbon from me. Probably. Our teeth gnashed together a bit, and she nibbled at my bottom lip, and I was trying so hard to basically glue my face to hers that my nose was practically flat against her cheek with the effort, but these were the kinds of discomforts you don't mind. I barely registered them. All I knew was that it was, indeed, happening. And I'd wanted to do this until she got to town. It was misery when she pulled away. I wanted to hit myself as soon as I thought that, because since when do I talk to myself like that? _It was misery when she pulled away._ Pfft. Even if it _was_ true.

"What?" I asked, a little breathless. "Somethin' wrong?"

She shot me a wry look and said dryly, "Plenty. But not at the moment."

"Then what?"

"This is going somewhere," she said hotly. Whether she was all hot and bothered because of me or her anger over our situation or a mix of the two was unknown to me. "You know it is. I know it is. I could feel those hands of yours roaming, buster. I know what you had in mind."

"Seems to me you had it in mind, too."

"May be, but I'm putting a stop to it right now."

"So something _is_ wrong." I'd flustered her, which I considered both a win and a loss. A win, because – hot. A loss, because I've put us into a pretty precarious situation, and keep dragging us down further. What an asshole I am.

Mary turned to face forward again and sighed through her nose. I took the time to notice that the windows had started to get just a bit steamy a la- _Titanic_. Made me feel a little cocky. "Lee, I'm going to say this, and I'm only going to say it once. I'll have sex with you if you call off the wedding. I don't want to do anything worse than what we're already doing. Got it?"

I got it. It stunned me a little to hear her say it, but I got it, and she was absolutely right. So I had a decision to make: whose heart was I going to break, Melissa's or Mary's?

"Okay," I whispered. "You're right."

"Damn straight."

I glanced at her. She had her eyes closed, and she looked about twenty years older for a beat before she opened her eyes back up, and then she just looked sad. "It's still early, we could get a drink or somethin', just to…just to pass the time," I offered lamely. But she shook her head.

"I should be getting back. They'll start to wonder."

"You're a grown woman, Mare."

She closed her eyes again and sighed through her nose. "Yes," she acknowledged, and when she opened her eyes I could see they were a little wet. "Yes, I know. But being here, and…and being with _you_ …it makes me feel like I'm sixteen years old again or something. And sixteen-year-old Mary had a curfew…and for once in her life, she's going to obey it."

xXx

Ah, poker night. A beloved tradition between men. One of my favorites.

When I'm invited, that is.

"Whaddya mean, I'm not invited?" Dad was on his way out the door, and he'd just broken the news to me. He scoffed.

"Kid" – and sometimes, man, I _really_ hated he still called me that – "I can't have ya taggin' along to everything. What – a guy can't hang with his crew?"

Martha rolled her eyes as Joan held back laughter. "Daddy, you can't say that."

"Say what?"

 _"'Hang with his crew.'_ You're too old." The look on Dad's face told me he already knew that. "It's too late for you to try bein' cool," she shook her head.

"That may be, but I been _hangin' with my crew_ since well before you were born, so I'd say I invented it."

This conversation was clearly putting my sisters in a lot of pain, which I think is what Dad was going for. He just smiled through their protests, looking mighty pleased with himself. Then he turned back on me. "Kid, ya got your own friends. And these are your last days of freedom – I don't see why in the hell you'd wanna spend them hangin' around a bunch of old men."

Sure. I went home a little pissed off, thinking to myself, sure – I could go out with any of my buddies, but I did plenty of that. I wanted to pick the men of my family's brains. I didn't get to see them very often anymore, and I liked playing cards. So I sat around watching football and having a beer, trying not to think of kissing Mary Mathews and her ultimatum, when my phone rang.

" _Hey, kid?"_

It was Uncle Soda. I wanted to scream at him that I never wanted to be called kid again. Instead, "Yeah."

" _Think you could give us a lift?"_

I furrowed my brow. "Uh, I guess. What's up?"

" _Um. Let's just…let's just say none of us is up to the task of drivin'._ " I heard incoherent mumbling in the background and laughter. I closed my eyes and sighed through my nose.

"Yeah. Sure. You're at your place?"

" _Yeah. Sorry."_

Sorry was right. I hung up the phone and ran outside to my truck and headed to the outer limits of Tulsa to pick up my drunk Dad and his buddies. Pony could sleep it off at Soda's – it's where he was staying, after all. One of the late-nite deejays was playing ELO's _Out of the Blue_ straight through, and I wondered what year it was. Musta been one of the guy's favorites. When I pulled up outside Soda's place and hopped out, Francine was waiting for me on the front porch.

"What're you doin' here?" I asked, knowing she didn't live here anymore. She and Annie lived closer to the center of town. She shrugged.

"I visit Dad all the time. He'd never admit to it, but he gets lonely. Even horse-crazy old men need a little human interaction. C'mon." She nodded her head. "They're out back on the sun porch." Fran led me to the porch where the five of them were lounging around, playin' cards, drinkin', smokin', and shootin' the shit. Soda looked a little startled when he saw me, but then something like recognition showed on his face and he waved his free hand towards me.

"Right, right – sorry, kid, forgot I called ya."

"That's okay."

It was kinda hard these days to pinpoint just how drunk they were. Sometimes, I think they're just acting. Just for the attention. But better safe than sorry. "Francine, honey, give us a minute," Soda said, and Francine shot us all a tight smile before backing out and heading into the house. Boys only, then. "Siddown, Lee."

Yeah, fuck – really boys only.

This has all been a trap.

I sat next to Dad. He was squinting at his cards, and then at Steve. "He's cheatin'," he drawled, trying to keep it between him and me, but Steve still heard.

"Shut up, you old fuck," he spat. Soda laughed, which got Pony to laugh. The only one being quiet was Two-Bit.

"So who am I drivin'?" I asked. "Dad? Steve, Two-Bit? Y'all need a lift?"

Two-Bit took a drag off his cigarette. "We need to talk first," he said lowly.

"Right!" Soda said suddenly. "Right, that's why I told the kid to sit down in the first place," he laughed, as if to fondly say to himself, _Oh, Sodapop Curtis, you dumbass!_ He threw in his cards, and the rest of the followed suit. (Hehe. No pun intended, but I guess I'm just that quick-witted!) He leaned his forearms on the table. "Right. Well, we been just…just chattin', this fine evening."

"Cool," I said shortly. "Glad y'all've been able to catch up." Two-Bit was still watching me dangerously. He was usually a fun drunk. Not tonight. Couldn't wait for the car ride home.

"Get to the point, Soda _pop_ ," Pony said tiredly, but still popping the, well _pop_. Two-Bit held up a hand.

"I got it," he said, and while he didn't seem to be making any of the rest of them nervous, he was getting me to start quaking in my boots. He took a drink of something harder than Bud Light, hissing a little as it went down. "I may have let slip the little ultimatum my daughter's given you."

It was very quiet. I wanted to curl up into the fetal position and cover my ears and close my eyes and pretend that none of them were here. But that's not what a grown man would do, and I'd gone and made some grown man decisions, so it was a little too late to go back to the tactics of four-year-old me. "She did?" I asked quietly. He nodded. "And…you all know about it, then." The rest of them nodded. No one was saying anything. It was like the four of them were playing witness to this conversation I was having. None of them ever kept secrets from each other; just between each other. "Two-Bit – "

He held up a hand, and I knew better than to keep going. "I'm just makin' sure you know," he continued lowly, "that if you make the wrong choice, I'll be there to kick your ass three ways from Sunday. And I have your father's blessin', so don't go hidin' behind him."

I swallowed. "What's…what's the right decision, sir?"

His lips twitched like he wanted to smile, but at what I don't know. "Guess you'll find out, won't ya?"

"Guess…guess so."

"Ya know," Pony yawned, stretching his arms over his head and cracking his neck and back, really just drawing attention to himself. "I thought you was engaged to Mary anyway when I got the call. I didn't even know you was seein' another girl." Yeah, he was drunk. He didn't talk like an Oklahoman unless he was drunk, or angry. My stomach felt leaden.

"That's what everybody thought," Dad sighed, fiddling with a cigar. "Hell, that's what I thought at first."

I sputtered. " _How?_ You at least knew who I was seein'." Dad shrugged.

"Weirder things have happened."

Steve considered me. "You and her ever…ya know – "

Two-Bit kicked his chair hard enough that it sent him topping towards Soda, who just laughed as he righted his buddy. " _Shut the fuck up_ ," he said through grit teeth. "That's my _daughter_ yer talkin' 'bout."

"I know," Steve coughed. "Just…just it'd seem _weird_ if they got engaged and they hadn't – oh, Jesus."

Two-Bit stood up and lunged for him, but Dad and Pony held him back, able to pretty quickly subdue him. I wondered if Steve was actively trying to get a rise out of him. "Shut the fuck. _Up_ , Randle," Two-Bit repeated. "That's my fucking _daughter –_ "

"We haven't," I cut in, just wanting this conversation to end so I could get those three old fucks home. Two-Bit could sit up front with me so he didn't kill Steve. "Why the hell did any of you think that anyway?"

"Cuz it was so sudden," Soda said like I was some sort of stupid idiot. Like it should have been obvious. "And, I mean, now we know that it was a _mistake_ " – they all started laughing, and all transgressions were quickly forgotten – "but _still_ , somethin' that out of the blue, woulda made more sense if it was just you and Mary comin' to yer senses."

"Our senses?" I repeated. Now they were _all_ looking at me like I was stupid.

"Kid," Two-Bit laughed sardonically, "you two weren't subtle. _Ever._ We've always known what was goin' on between y'all. Hell, even yer mom knows. She's as floored by this as the rest of us."

xXx

Wait.

 _Wait._

Holy shit.

XXXXX

 **AN: FYI, rain on your wedding day is good luck.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	6. Every Day a Little Death

**Author's Note: Aaaaand we're back! Extra long chapter ahead, and an update on _For Their Flowers_ coming soon as possible – also extra long. Just gotta get through finals.**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

 _"You can't make me!"_

 _Her father shrugged. Took another sip of his beer. "'Course I can. I'm your father."_

 _"So?"_

 _"So, I'm gonna help you do what's best for you. And sugar, that boy – God knows I love 'im – lives all the way out here, and you're all the way out there, and you ain't…baby, it ain't gonna be good for you. He's just gonna break your heart."_

 _"You don't know what's best for me," she whispered, tearful and bitter._

 _"Of course I do," he said gently._

 _"You're a hypocrite," she spat._

 _"Maybe. But your mother also didn't leave after only a few weeks. We had time."_

 _"We've known for years," she insisted._

 _"I'm sure you thought you did."_

 _Mary sighed and looked up at the moon behind him. It was really putting on a show for them tonight. The crescent moon was Mary's moon. Forget full moons – this moon was the symbol of all the divinity and grace in the universe. But tonight, it mocked her. Tonight, she hated Her. And – "I hate you," she whispered, so full of bitterness and anger. She tried to send the moon an apology. (Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I know what I'm doing is wrong, I always know, but I can never stop myself. Tell him that just because I hate him doesn't mean I don't love him.)_

 _Her father definitely felt a pang in his chest, didn't like it, but he couldn't say he hadn't been expecting it. He knew someday, Mary would say that to him. They were too often at odds. To him, this was inevitable. And he got it – what he wouldn't have given to get right in his old man's face and tell him he hated him, and just how much._

 _But his old man deserved it._

 _Mary's father was not his old man._

 _"I know," he said, because he did. "But you really don't."_

 _He bent down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head and then walked off the dock, leaving Mary to stand alone and confused. But maybe not alone, because she had the moon._

xXx

My eyes shot open. I stared up into the darkness. To my left, Lisa kicked me. I was sweating. I remembered that night. I remembered it all too well. I was sixteen years old. Lee was seventeen. I had woken up in the middle of the night, like right now, and started wandering my grandparents' house, finding Dad sitting downstairs on the back porch, as he so often did. He sometimes had trouble sleeping, too. He says he's restless, but I don't know from what or why. Maybe he's like me, and that's just the way we are, without any real reason. Dad spotted me, and asked me if I wanted to take a drive, like we did when I was little and I did the same thing. We were always finding each other in the middle of the night, when the rest of the family was sound asleep. I wonder if they know this is even something we do. It's sometimes the only time we can stand each other.

I told him yes, we should go driving.

We ended up at the river, where we had spent so many long days in its cloudy water.

We often ended up at the river.

I remember, too, the nighttime drive we took down there when Daddy told me that crescent moons were a symbol for the Virgin Mary. I had been really young. I had been obsessed with knowing where my name had come from, only to discover years later in the eighth grade that it came from nowhere, that my mother had just liked it. Sometimes, you just like things. That was the same day I kissed Lee for the first time in the Sunday school room. His tie had matched my dress. His teeth were perfectly straight. It was only two years later that I realized that all the little things I thought and felt about him translated into loving him. And then, as the memory I dreamt reminded me, I told my father at sixteen that I hated him because he was trying to protect me from all this heartbreak. Maybe he had seen this coming. Maybe he had known all the time that this would end up messy and confusing, as it had. I put a hand to my stomach because I felt something stirring as I thought about that Easter of eighth grade, of young Lee Curtis and his footballer haircut and how he smelled like his father's cologne because he wanted to seem more grown-up. I loved him for every silly thing about him. I even loved him for not even being able to suggest getting a dog without this woman thinking he was proposing.

My whole body felt fuzzy with lovesickness.

I sat up and swung my feet onto the cold wood floor. Lisa stirred, smacking her lips in her sleep. There was a certain amount of predictability to sharing a bed with Lisa. Getting her to sleep was a problem, though. She liked to stay up and talk, like this was a sleepover or something. I mean, I didn't see her so much anymore, and Lisa was so tethered to home, more so than Dally or I. Dally was only staying at home right now because Mom and Dad were so worried about his health this past year. He was itching to go. Lisa not so much. She liked to pretend things were like how they were when we were kids, staying up talking past bedtime. Just tonight, she'd asked me the following:

 _"Did you ever have a roommate you didn't like? Cuz I'm not so sure I like mine."_

 _"Have you had sex with James yet?"_

 _"Do you think_ Mom and Dad _still have sex? Yuck! Don't answer that."_

 _"You are going to Melissa's bachelorette party, right?_ "

The answers to which were yes, yes, yes you dumbass, and…maybe.

I had the feeling that Melissa knew every time she looked at me what was going on between me and her fiancé. That she could smell my love for him on me, all those pheromones. Or, maybe I was being paranoid. She hadn't even seen Lee and I together yet – I had completely avoided him at the party.

I looked at the clock on the bedside table – one-thirty. I sighed, giving up on sleep for now and decided to slink downstairs, maybe watch TV or eat the entire contents of the fridge. Then maybe, after that, drape myself over the divan and cry out until someone comes and asks me what's wrong, and then deny any attention they try to give me.

I have been, am, and always will be a dramatic bitch.

Got out of bed, left Lisa and her kicking to sprawl out all over the bed, and started to quietly slink downstairs. I felt something drop into my stomach when I heard voices, and stopped at the top of the staircase so I could listen in and peering over the banister, craning my neck so I could just barely see them, but they couldn't see me. From what I could tell – and I could tell – it was Dad, Dallas, and Mom, surprisingly. This was late for her, so I wondered what was keeping her up, but she seemed to be calling it quits.

"I think I'm going to bed."

"Alright, night, Mom," Dallas said, waving to her a little as she headed towards the kitchen and the back staircase. Dad scowled at Dallas. "What?"

"You can't take a hint, can ya?" he asked, then sighed. "What the hell is this?"

"It's Space Ghost."

"What the hell is Space Ghost?"

"Well," Dallas backtracked, "it's actually called _Space Ghost Coast to Coast,_ and basically it's this old Hanna-Barbera cartoon character that hosts an animated talk show, but all his guests are live-action, and his Ed McMahon is this bug guy named Brak and his director is Moltar, and they run a show together from outer space."

"What…the fuck kinda show is that?"

"It's funny!"

"You're cracked. You need to go to bed."

"You can't make me go to bed, I'm twenty-three! I'm a man!" Dallas puffed out his chest.

"Uh-huh. Well, Mr. Man, I guess I'll leave you to your cartoon talk show and call it a night."

"Suit yourself. Cuz the sooner you go to bed, man, the sooner the shitstorm's gonna come."

"You don't know it's gonna be a shitstorm. It's a wedding, for Pete's sake."

"So it's already ridiculous enough without Mary's baggage."

"Hey, be good to your sister," he defended. "She's havin' a hard time with it, even if she doesn't wanna say so out loud."

"I know," Dallas shrugged. "Not much to do now. I'm sure it'll be fine," he said, trying to sound confident. But I wasn't so sure it would be.

Dad patted him on the shoulder and left him to his show like he promised, following after Mom. I sighed and made the rest of the way downstairs. God, Dallas was probably right. This was gonna be a totally fucking wreck, if only because it's going to tear me up inside. I don't know…I just…I don't _know a damn thing_.

"Hey, Mary." I smiled weakly at Dallas. "Can't sleep?"

"Nah," I breathed, trying to stay casual. I walked around to the couch and sat next to him. "I don't feel like myself right now."

Dallas turned away from the TV and stared at me with a sad look. "Did you hear all that?" I nodded. "Jeez, I'm sorry – "

"Don't be," I said easily. "It's okay. Why are you up?"

He pointed to the TV. "Space Ghost."

I smirked. "That all?"

Dallas had the decency to look a bit bashful. "Blood sugar was low. Raided the fridge." He reached onto the floor and held up a half-eaten plate with a sandwich, an apple, chips, god – you name it, he had it. "Mom heard me get up. You know how she gets freaked. They sat up with me for a bit. I'm fine now." He smiled. "You'd think after nearly fifteen years they'd be used to this by now."

"I don't know. I can see why they worry – you're a dumbass."

"Yeah, yeah, yuk it up," he laughed. He bit his lip. "You know we're all worried about you with all this."

"I know."

"'Cept me," he added. "I mean, I don't give two hangs 'bout ya. If it were up to me, I'd pop some popcorn and enjoy the show, but…" He shrugged. I snorted.

"You always know what to say, Dallas. A poet."

"That I am, sister. Now shut up – my program's on."

xXx

"Mary, sweetheart, you have to come out of there at some point."

I glanced over at the door to make sure I was right and that it was still locked, and it was. I crossed my arms tightly over my chest, holding up my towel; I had another one wrapped around my head as I sat petulantly on the closed toilet seat, refusing to open the door up for anyone. "No I don't," I called to my mother. "I can stay here all day if I want."

"What?" Mom squawked. "Not in a wet towel, you won't. You'll catch something." I didn't want to tell her that I was worried I already had. The first thing I did this morning was spit up watery bile. I felt fine _now_ , but we'd just have to wait and see. Right now, I was just pissed off and didn't want to see anyone. Nobody had even done anything yet to me today to piss me off, but that was just sort of my default at the moment. "Isn't there anything that will get you out of there?"

I thought about it. Short of the SWAT team, I couldn't come up with anything. "No," I said decisively.

" _Mary_ ," she sighed. I rolled my eyes.

"I'm twenty-five, mother. I can do what I want."

"Not when what you want is sitting in a bathroom ignoring all your problems! That's _not_ the way a grown woman behaves."

Oh, _this_ again? Thought she and I had moved past all this. Guess you never really stop being a mother once ya start. "I want to be alone." There was a brief pause. Smug, and thinking I'd won, I sighed and closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, trying to collect myself, when there came another pounding on the door.

"Mary Elizabeth, come out of there." It was my father's voice. He sounded more tired than usual. I wondered what he'd gotten up to last night. My mother whispered something to him. "…please?"

 _Please_ was not often a word that popped up in conversation with Dad. It was always a surprise to be reminded it was even in his vocabulary. I held my towel closer against my body and rolled my eyes; in a rare move, I asked the Mother for strength. (Never Jesus, because what have men ever done for me?) (And how dare I still be attracted to them? How dare I still love them!) Then I left the bathroom. My parents took me in.

"Why were you hiding in there?" Mom asked, her voice grating on my ears this morning. I was mad that she'd brought in backup and hadn't just left me alone. I was feeling more tension between my mother than I was used to, and I didn't like it, but I had no idea what to do about it. It made me sad.

"Why hide anywhere?" I asked. "A locked bathroom's as good a hiding spot as, say, a treehouse. Or in a closet." Dad made a choked sound and recovered with a weak laugh.

"We're not talkin' 'bout the hidin' _spot_ , dahlin'. More about the why of the hidin'."

I crossed my arms even tighter and shrugged; any tighter, my air would probably start to cut off. "Why?" I repeated, and they both nodded, urging me to explain myself. "Uh. I just wanted to be alone," I said. That was at least…sort of right. I hadn't felt right since I'd woken up from my dream last night. Just…off. I glanced at Dad and wondered if he sometimes thought about that night, if he thought I still hated him. I don't know if I ever really did. I don't think so. "What's so wrong with that?"

Mom and Dad both blinked. It was really easy to tell when they didn't buy something, but I think they came to a silent agreement not to call me on my shit. "Nothin'," Dad sighed.

"Get dressed," Mom said. "We're going grocery shopping."

xXx

So Mom made me tag along with her and Lisa to the grocery store. We always end up doing errands for my grandparents when we're down here. Just something Mom and Dad like to do. I wonder if I'll someday end up doing the same for them. I tried to get out of it, saying I had plans with Annie and Francine, but Mom shut that down immediately.

"Stop trying to get out of things," she told me on the drive, her voice calm, but trained ears such as mine could tell that was only because she was working hard not to lose her shit. "And stop pulling others into them."

She looked a bit ashamed to have said that, but didn't dwell. Lisa gave me a sympathetic look on our way into the Winn-Dixie, telling me she felt for me even if she didn't understand. There was an anger settling in my stomach, an anger towards not just my situation but my mother for all the petty little jabs she'd thrown my way. I had never in my life met anyone as petty and superficial as my mother, and for as much as my father annoyed and dogged and yelled, at least he was on my side on this. My mother was the coldest person, and it was hard to believe she'd ever been willing to give up everything for love.

Until we were walking down the bread aisle and Mom's cart crashed into another woman's when she wasn't looking.

"Bridget Stevens, as I live and breathe!"

Mom paled. I raised an eyebrow at Lisa, who just pouted her lips and shrugged. I didn't recognize this woman as any of my mother's friends. I didn't recognize this woman, period. She was tall and skinny, looking fit for probably being about the same age as my mother, and still with a bit of a tan leftover from the summer. And she was very fashionable, like Mom is. Her hair was a platinum blonde, her eyes a piercing blue, and her smile pleasant, but…something was lurking there. I couldn't match her up with anyone Mom had told us about before, though. Mom politely cleared her throat and recovered with a tight smile, fluffing her hair a bit.

"Vickie, hello. How are you?"

Her voice was polite, but I could hear the tightness in it. I shot a look to Lisa, whose eyes had gone wide as she struggled to hold back surprised laughter. Was this the infamous Vickie Harper? It _had_ to be! Oh, _no!_ This was too good to be true, and my temporary bitterness towards my mother made the whole situation even more delightful, like the universe was trying to give her the comeuppance she so richly deserved for her treatment towards me the past few days. I was absolutely delighted to see my mother face-to-face with her high school rival, and I could tell Lisa was eating it up, too.

"Oh, you know. There's always _somethin_ ' to do, some event to put on. I'm shopping for a dinner party we're having Saturday. But I'm good! What brings you to town?"

Mom seemed to have to think a little before she answered each question. "Oh, we're here for a wedding," she said, like she had just remembered. "You know Darrel Curtis? His son is getting married."

"Yes, I remember reading about that in the paper. I should've guessed you'd be in town for that. Your… _husband_ is very good friends with Darrel."

I noticed Lisa bite her lip at the way she said "husband." Kind of like Vickie couldn't wrap her head around who my mother had married. That seemed to be par for the course for what I knew of her character. "Right," Mom nodded.

"You'll have to forgive me – it seems I've forgotten my manners. Bridget, who _are_ these lovely young women?"

Mom sort of gave her a relieved smile. Us kids had always been an easy topic of conversation for her. "Vickie, these are my daughters, Mary and Lisa. Mary works at Georgetown University Hospital," she said proudly. "And Lisa's studying ballet at Julliard." Vickie looked mildly impressed. "And my son just graduated from Syracuse last year, and he's looking to get his Master's degree." I noted that she didn't use his name, didn't call him Dallas, and wondered why. Perhaps Vickie had known his namesake.

"In what?" Vickie asked, and I could tell by her tone that no matter what Mom said, she'd be judging her.

"Oh, well he majored in American history, so I assume something along those lines." Mom was very proud of Dallas, we all knew that, but I could hear an underlying worry in her voice that to Vickie's ears, that didn't sound quite as impressive as him becoming a lawyer or politician or something. But Dallas liked his research and visiting his historical sites and geeking out over important battles and figures and presidents, and somehow tied in his love of baseball when he could. And he'd watched pretty much all of Ken Burns' documentaries over his past year of sickliness. Just sat in the basement and watched them on tape. I think he was getting his Master's degree more out of boredom than anything else.

"You must be very proud," Vickie said coolly. "Well, it was very nice to meet you girls," she said in a nicer tone. I didn't feel as if I'd met her at all – neither of us had said anything. "And Bridget, it was _so_ lovely to see you. Have a nice day!" And then Vickie smiled at us all one last time and pushed her cart down the aisle, disappearing into the void that was the produce section. Lisa and I turned back on Mom, who had a hand pressed against a pale cheek. She looked a little stunned.

"Y'okay, Mom?" Lisa asked, and Mom nodded.

"Yes," she said robotically. "I'm fine." Mom took a deep breath and put her hand back on the cart and started pushing again, walking quickly enough that Lisa and I were practically jogging to keep up with her. Both of us were teeming with questions, but I didn't even know where to begin. The whole thing had been so awkward, and too good to be true. We finally caught up to her in dairy, and Mom shook her head as she checked cartons of eggs for cracks.

"So…" I drawled. "That was Vickie Harper."

"Yep," Mom said shortly. "That was her. God, did you see her?" She asked. "It's like she hasn't aged a _day!_ " She put one carton back and exchanged it for another. "God, couldn't she at least have gotten fat or something?"

Lisa chuckled. "Mom, it's not like you don't look good, too."

"I know," she snapped. "I look great. But why does she have to?" Mom finally found a dozen eggs she was happy with and put them in the cart, and Lisa and I followed her to the milk. "God, the last thing I needed today was to see _her_. She was so… _mean_ ," she said, scrunching up her nose.

"We've heard the stories," I said. "Sorry."

Mom looked at me with a tired look. "Thanks," she sighed. "I haven't seen her in _decades_ , and then…there she is," Mom said grandly with a spread of her arms. She looked at Lisa and I conspiratorially. "Have I told you everything about our junior year?"

"You told us about how you beat her out for prom queen senior year," Lisa chirped. "And Miss Senior."

"Yes, but that was senior year. I'm talking about junior year, when she and I were still friends." Lisa and I shrugged. Maybe she had, a little. But I couldn't remember anything. Mom wove her tale as Lisa and I continued to follow her through the grocery store. "I've told you she was classist, but the little hypocrite went and did it with Dallas Winston of all people, got pregnant with his baby, and then ended it. _Then_ , she had the _audacity_ to try and ruin everything for me and your father at junior prom – which your father only went to in order to go and ruin her by telling everybody _her_ secret." My eyes bulged. That was sort of a dirty move – I had to wonder if my parents had really done the right thing. But it didn't seem like it mattered because Vickie Harper still got nominated for all the same things my mother had. "I guess it doesn't matter now," she sighed. "She still makes me feel small, so I guess that just says everything."

"Oh, Mama," Lisa breathed, wrapping her arm around Mom. Mom returned the gesture. "She ain't shit."

Mom laughed a little. Lisa had her fair share of popularity contests in high school. While I'd preferred to stay more on the fringe, Lisa had been a cheerleader just like Mom, homecoming queen just like Mom…just Little Miss Sunshine, Little Miss Popular – _just like Mom_. I wasn't some outcast or anything, but my priorities lay elsewhere, and I'd never been as extroverted as Lisa. Dallas' social life seemed to vary based on how he was feeling physically, but he always had the guys on the baseball team and Tony. But she and Lisa saw eye-to-eye on things like this, and it was clear that her words tickled her and helped her in some small way. I just felt bad because I couldn't do the same. And that was just…great. Because right now, the person I needed was my mother. She knew a thing or two about rocky romance, like Dad had said.

But she didn't seem to want to help me with mine.

xXx

"You're sure ya ain't hungry?"

I nodded against the pillow, just wanting Dad to go away. "I'm fine," I said robotically. "I don't feel well. I already ate." I didn't want dinner, but I couldn't decide on a lie, which made Dad roll his eyes, but he didn't press that matter any further. But he didn't exactly go away, instead settling down next to me and messing with my hair. He did that a lot. I think he did it at times like this in order to be sneaky about checking for fevers, but I knew he wouldn't find one. He just liked to keep up the pretense.

"Yer mom's sorry 'bout earlier."

"Then she can come and apologize herself," I mumbled. "You ain't her messenger."

"Nah," he agreed. "But then again, she didn't ask me to say anything, I'm just tellin' ya. She knows when the right time to apologize is. Knows yer hurtin' right now."

"She doesn't care."

"Oh, _does too_. She cares a lot about what you're goin' through. She just don't know how to say it, and she don't know if it's the right thing to say anything at all. Ya know, seeing Vickie Harper earlier really put her in a funk." He sighed. "I think she feels as if the past is comin' back to haunt her."

I rolled over and stared at him, my eyebrows all scrunched up. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

"Means that there's…a lotta feelin's comin' with all this, and…and, well, she's felt how you've felt before. Hell, so have I. I told ya we know what it's like to not know if someone ya love don't love ya back, or to not know if anything's gonna work out the way ya want, or even know what to do." Dad didn't like talking about feelings. You could hear it in his voice. He always sounded like he was talking about something icky, which I guess in his mind he thought he was, but I appreciated the effort.

"I guess," I sighed.

"Ya know," he went on, "I think I owe you an apology, too."

"What for?"

"I, uh…may or may not have told all the guys about what you said to Lee about…the whole sex thing" – I groaned – "…and I also may or may not have told Soda to call him over so I could chew him out in person." He pursed his lips. "We were all pretty smashed, and I know that don't excuse nothin' – "

"Dad!" I squawked, all of this catching up with me. I sat up, and maybe a bit too quickly because I had to squeeze my eyes shut for a minute to ward off the vertigo. "Dad. What the fuck."

"I'm sorry!" He tried. "Like I said, I was wasted, and maybe ya shouldn't'a told me in the first place!"

I glared. "That's not an apology. That's an excuse."

His face fell. "I really am sorry, Mare. I just wanna protect ya, ya know? Keep yer heart from getting broke into a zillion pieces."

"Instead of the millions of pieces it's already in?" I shot back. "I don't know what to do here. You keep wanting to step in, but then you tell me Lee and I gotta figure this out for ourselves. And Mom'll disown me if I ruin this wedding, so I don't exactly know what to go for here. Do I keep my mother or Lee?"

Dad pursed his lips and pushed a long sigh out through his nose. "Yeah, you're in a real pickle of a humdinger of a situation here. Yer mama ain't gonna disown ya no matter what you do, sugar. Seriously."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"You already are," he grinned. "Trust me. She don't know what she's doin' right now, either. She put away the groceries and started bawlin'. She's confusin' herself. You're confusin' everybody else – it's just a weird time for everybody."

Amen to that. I sighed and leaned against him. I rarely allowed my father this much contact, and for a not-so-touchy-feely guy, he seemed to know that all I really needed was for him to shut the fuck up and just sit with me for a little while. Just sit and listen to the wind whip the shutters. Just sit and think about how none of us were going to come out of this in one piece. Just sit together.

xXx

"I feel so gross. Something's wrong with me, there has to be."

The constant dull roar of the mall food court was giving me a headache. We had bags from Yankee Candle, Victoria's Secret, Bath and Body Works…ya know. Stores that guys would never go into unless seriously coerced. Money had been blown today, the Lord's work had been done, because if there's one thing that we'd all learned about each other, it was that a day of shopping could un-sour any mood. I hated that this was all for me, though, and poked at my fries, not really feeling up to eating. I could feel everyone's eyes on me.

"You look okay to me," Joan said. "Well – physically, I mean. You still seem pretty down, though…I know! We should stop in Sam Goody's."

"And then Wet Seal!" Lisa tacked on. "I saw a dress in the window I'd like to try on." I shook my head. Martha watched me closely, running a thumb across her bottom lip and then sighing.

"Joanie, you're crazy – she looks like shit."

"Does she? Well, I dunno. She's looked like that all week."

"I've looked like shit all week? Thanks a lot, Joan."

"That's not what I – ugh!" Joan threw up her hands. "Look, that's not what I meant. I meant you've just been so down about everything, and I get it. Nobody's actually happy right now."

"Not in this family, at least," Martha grumbled, then started at the final dregs of Coke at the bottom of her cup, sucking loudly through the straw. "The Macdonald's, however…"

"I don't _care_ ," I breathed. "I just don't care."

"Yes you do," Lisa said gently. "C'mon, why don't we…let's just finish up here, okay? Eat something, Mary, you look like you're about to pass out. Then we can hit a couple more stores and head out. Okay?"

We all nodded. I ate some fries and drank more water just to please my sister, who kept shooting me all these worried little looks, even after we'd left the food court and were headed toward Sam Goody's.

"There is somethin' up with you," Martha said to me as we browsed the CDs. "Somethin'…else."

xXx

A sudden, horrible possibility occurred to me.

xXx

"Hooboy." Lisa put a hand to her cheek. "It's like your senior year all over again."

I rolled my eyes. "Nothing happened that time. It was fine. I was overreacting, I was late by a _day_."

"So, you mean, you think something's gonna happen this time? Or are you saying…are you saying you're overreacting this time, too?"

I didn't know how to answer. We both stared at the box in my hands. I'd stopped by the drugstore on the way home from the mall. I really couldn't escape the whole trapped-in-a-crappy-romcom feeling, could I? Lisa and I kept on staring like that would help anything, sort of like we had last time. Last time, Lisa had just turned twelve, and I was eighteen, and I hadn't meant for her to find out. She stormed into my room, in one of her bolder moods, and saw me sitting and staring at the box as I sat on my bed. Lisa was pretty quick even back then, and she read my mood. She may have been too curious for her own good, and I probably should have tried to keep the whole situation from her. It really is a regret of mine that I hadn't. It should've just stayed between Jenny and I. But it was too late at that point, and Lisa kept the secret, even though nothing ever came of it, and yes, maybe I had been overreacting a bit. But even the possibility was enough to scare the hell out of me. I was close to graduation, but what about college? What would my parents have thought of me? I'm lucky it worked out back then. I wasn't so sure about now.

"I hope so," I whispered. "But I'm not so sure this time."

Lisa hummed in the back of her throat. She was only eighteen, but she came across so much older sometimes. Lisa seemed to have her life in control, more so than I had at eighteen. Lisa was a goddamn rock. "Well. Since you've done more drinking than eating today, there's no way in hell you don't hafta pee. Go." She waved me off towards the bathroom. I grimaced as I ripped the box open and then started unbuttoning my jeans.

"Um. Lisa?"

"What."

"Don't go anywhere."

"I'm not."

Okay. Okay, good.

"Just do it, Mary."

Right. Right, right.

xXx

Lisa was nice enough to hold me while I cried all over her new Wet Seal sweater.

xXx

Listening to a phone ring is torture. The waiting and anticipation of it all is torture. I'm not one of those people who struggles with talking on the phone – I drove our phone bill up like crazy, and Dad made sure I knew about it – but this was obviously different. This time around, the reason for calling was literally life-changing. And it was dawning on me more and more that even after all these months, I wasn't any more in love with James than I had been at the start. Hell, I wasn't sure I even _liked_ him all that much more. He was just…fine. That wasn't exactly what I was looking for.

" _This is James_."

I took a deep breath. "It's Mary."

" _Mary! Where the hell are ya, babe? I tried calling your place, and this isn't your number."_

"In Tulsa. A family friend is getting married," I said hollowly. "He's my father's best friend's son."

" _Father's best friend's son?_ " He repeated. _"You know him that well?_ "

Oh, like you wouldn't even begin to know, James. "Yeah, we've grown up together. How're things?"

" _Oh – fine. Firm got a huge case, and Dad's been going crazy with the campaign. He's not about to lose his seat this year! He went home, even did some stumping for Gore._ "

"You're from Massachusetts," I said wryly. "I don't think your father _or_ Al Gore have to worry too much about carrying the state."

 _"Can never be too careful. You call for anything in particular? I mean, I'm just in a cab, but – "_

"Oh, well – "

 _"Hey, wait – did you tell me about this wedding?"_

"I don't remember if I did," I lied. I definitely hadn't told him. "Probably you just don't remember. It's not that big a of a deal, just a family thing." Another lie – and a big one at that.

 _"Well, I feel like I should be there. Couples go to weddings together, and I want to meet the rest of your family. In fact, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'll catch the next possible flight to Tulsa so we can be together. It's been too long since I've seen you_."

"It's been barely a week, and you really don't have to, you're busy," I tried, but James wasn't having it.

 _"It's no trouble. I'll work when I can. I'll be down there before you know it. See ya later, baby!_ "

And then he hung up. I stared at my grandfather's office phone, listening to the dial tone. I had called him to tell him the news, and now he was coming down _here_. This couldn't be happening. This couldn't be my life. Could it? I pinched myself, hoping this was all a dream, but instead just drew blood. _Great_.

xXx

"So…what're you gonna do?"

Over our many years together, the three of us had often congregated, such as we were now, to discuss matters that we didn't want our parents butting in on – at least, not yet. This was one of those times. Dallas and Lisa watched me with worried eyes as I paced back and forth across the bedroom floor, my mother's old bedroom floor. I wondered if she'd ever dragged her feet across this same path, worried about boys and grades and play practice. I didn't know, but what I did know is that I felt more connected to her in this moment than I ever had before in my entire life. I knew my mother would understand this.

"I don't know, completely," I sighed.

"What do you mean, 'completely'?" Lisa asked with a curl of her lip.

"I mean I'm toying with a few possibilities, okay?" I smarted back. I couldn't even begin to figure out how I felt about all this, or if I even _wanted_ this. If I was even cut out for this, or would ever be.

Dallas puffed up his cheeks and slowly blew out the air. "What a fucking mess this all is," he breathed. And he wasn't wrong. "It doesn't make sense to me. None of this makes sense!"

"Dallas," Lisa sighed condescendingly, reading the moment completely wrong – but she often did that on purpose, "What doesn't make sense about a man stickin' it – "

He cut her off with a dramatic _"Lisa!_ That's not what I mean! I mean that none of this should be happening in the first place. Lee shouldn't be getting married to Melissa, Mary shouldn't even have to be worrying about some other guy's baby. This was not the way it was supposed to go."

"And what in the hell does that mean?" I asked. Dallas popped up off the frilly window seat and started gesturing wildly, giving his words an even greater effect.

"It means that…" He sighed. "It means. Well, Dad, when he was driving us home from Tulsa last year, after I graduated and was spending some time down here…we got to talking. And not just about the past, ya know? Not just about Dallas Winston and Johnny Cade, but we talked about the future, too. And we both agreed that we're both _damn_ sick and tired of things goin' wrong. Nobody may be dyin', but this is all a goddamn tragedy. You we're _s'posed_ to be with Lee, Mary. That's what the universe wants for y'all."

"Dallas, that doesn't make any sense," I shook my head. "You and Dad are not the driving forces of the universe."

"That's Mom and Dad," Lisa said smartly. We ignored her. She wasn't helping this conversation along in any way. Dallas at least had something real to say.

"It makes perfect sense," he whispered. "You're both gonna make fun of me for sayin' this, but I don't care what Dad says – there is a reason and a why to everything that happens, from the glorious to the gloriously fucked up." He cleared his throat. "When the Big Bang happened – "

"Oh, _Dallas_ , not this - !"

"Yes, this!" My eyes widened at his urgency. He calmly picked back up. "When the Big Bang happened, the resulting explosion is the reason that not just the universe itself exists, but everything in it, every atom, molecule, substance…all of it. Everything we're made of. We're all fuckin' _cosmic_. We're all goddamn _miracles_. And that's why I gotta believe that things happen for a reason, and there is some sort of meaning to all of this. And I know our family is infinitesimally small in the grand scheme, but it still fucks with my brain that if even someone as retarded as Dad and I can see plain as the noses on our faces that you and Lee should be together, I don't see why any of the rest of this is happening." He flapped a hand. "I just don't get it. But then again, nothin' much has made sense to me lately."

I wasn't breathing. I don't think Lisa was, either. Dallas definitely was – his chest was heaving and he kept panting, always getting himself worked up into a good lather. Dallas would be good at the pulpit, a real natural. He loved the sound of his own voice. Just like Dad – and maybe just like Mom, too. "Dallas – "

"Maybe it's still gonna happen," Lisa said, finally contributing something worthwhile. "Maybe things aren't s'posed to run smooth. Dally, life ain't easy. You know that as well as anybody does. Mary and Lee will make their way to each other if that's what's supposed to happen. In the meantime…"

"In the meantime, you're still pregnant," Dallas said to me. He clapped a hand on my shoulder and I nearly cried. I really had been emotional lately. And maybe the need to hurl hadn't just been nerves. "Mary, a _baby_."

"I know," I sighed.

They both seemed dumbfounded by it. So was I.

"You have to tell Mom and Dad," Lisa said, desperation in her voice. "You _have to_."

But she didn't have to tell me twice. Because who else would know what I was going through but my mother?

xXx

I found Mom and Dad, um…snogging in the den, and it was awkward as hell, but this really couldn't wait. My heart wasn't going to let me wait any longer. So I cleared my throat and made my presence known to them, and they stopped and looked at me in confusion because Jesus, it was late, and they thought I'd already gone off to bed, but now here I was interrupting their make-out session. At least it was for something important.

"Can I talk to you guys?" I asked in a small voice. They looked at each other with worried looks, but they both nodded.

"Sure, baby." Dad patted the spot between him and Mom on the couch, inviting me, but I ended up sitting across from them on the coffee table. "What's up?"

I had just turned twenty-five years old. My mother had been that young. She had been that young, and I could see now how young that was. When it became clear to them that I was having a hard time getting the information out, Mom said, "Is something wrong? Are you alright? She _has_ been acting awfully strange," she said to my father, who nodded in solemn agreement. "Honey, I know this has all been so hard on you," she continued. "And I'm sorry for how I've been behaving, too. It's…hypocritical. You love him, so I know how this must hurt."

I was touched by her apology, I was. But I couldn't acknowledge it just then. This had all become so much more complicated, and the newest complication was all I could think about. I still didn't say anything, _couldn't_ say anything. I didn't know how. I didn't know how to say this.

"Mary?" Dad's entire question in one word. I shook my head, but I don't know what at. "Mary, what is it?"

"Tell us, sweetheart," Mom said gently. I felt her grab my hand, and I looked up into her eyes. She looked apologetic. Kind and warm, like she usually is. My mother would understand. But I was afraid of what both of them would think of me. Would this just be another disappointment on the already-impressive list?

"I don't know how to say it," I said miserably.

Dad laughed good-naturedly. "Honey – c'mon. How many times we been through this over the years? What, ya get another hole stuck in yer body? Tattoo sleeve? Just tell us, sugar."

He was trying to joke, and I was grateful for that somewhere in the back of my mind, but I couldn't respond to it, and it didn't help me feel any lighter. I was just in a perpetual state of shock. I could sense Mom picking up on this, moving to sit next to me on the coffee table. She always smelled good – always. Like vanilla and White Shoulders, some of her clothes still holding the faintest trace of nicotine from when Dad still openly smoked around her. Dad stood up, stood over me. He smelled good, too. More like nicotine, but also like cologne (not aftershave, because there was hardly ever an after-shave stage for him) and…well, like the clay of the Earth. The less I said, the more I think it clicked that something was wrong, or that my news was at the very least monumental.

Dad said, "Mary." It was a statement. It was my name. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Would ya lookit that moon, Mary? Puttin' on a show just for you. The (Not-So) Virgin Mary. Mary, the protector, living across the universe, throughout all space and time. I hung onto her. I prayed again to her, asked her to see me through this. Asked her what for and why I was being punished, or if this was another one of those signs Lee was talking about. "Mary," my mother repeated.

I came back down from the Moon and settled on the Earth.

"I'm pregnant," I told them. Dad's hand fell heavy on my shoulder and squeezed. He looked pale. Mom let a soft, sighing _oh_ fall from her lips. _Oh, no_ , she whispered next. "I'm pregnant," I repeated. It was settling in now. "I'm pregnant and I don't love James."

"Oh, Mary," Dad sighed. " _Mary_."

"You're sure?"

"Yes," I snapped at my mother. "Yes, I am one-hundred percent, completely, totally, and truly sure. I'm sure about all of it."

"All of what?" Dad asked warily.

"Everything I just said. I _am_ pregnant, and I _don't_ love the father."

"Does he know?" Mom wondered. I shook my head.

"No." A sigh. "But he's coming down here."

Dad groaned and sat down next to me, he and Mom sitting close beside me, leaning into me, shielding me, protecting me for the time being from what was to come. I didn't know what to tell Lee. Didn't know if I _should_ tell Lee. Didn't know if I should bring this baby into the world with parents that didn't love each other, or if I should…or if I should do what Vickie Harper did all those years ago. Mom could say what she wanted about her, but it would have taken a lot of strength to do what she did, terminate her pregnancy, and I wasn't sure yet if that's what I should do, or just embark on a journey of single motherhood. I felt I was getting ahead of myself, the prospects dizzying. My parents, at the very least, knew they wanted each other and knew they wanted me when I happened. That is not at all what this situation looked like.

"I don't know what to do," I whispered. They both shushed me, Dad petting my hair and Mom squeezing tighter.

"You don't have to figure it out tonight. For tonight we can just…"

"We can just sit here," Dad finished for her when she trailed off. "We can just be here."

So that's what we did.

XXXXX

 **AN: Thanks for reading!**


	7. The King of Carrot Flowers

**Author's Note: Sorry this one took me so long! I hope it was worth the wait, though.**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

" _Lee…I kinda can't talk right now_."

"Why not?"

Mary hemmed and hawed. " _I'm just sorta busy, okay? I'm sorry about it, but…well, I have things to get ready for, too. Lisa's roped me in to going to the bachelorette party, and…yeah."_

My eyes widened. "You're goin'?"

" _Yeah_ ," she sighed. " _I just…I figure it's the right thing to do. You love her, after all, and I…I care about you a lot, so. It's the right thing to do._ "

"Yeah," I drawled. "Thanks, Mare."

 _"Don't mention it. Please. It's nothing. See you at the rehearsal, Lee."_

And then she hung up.

xXx

With a final twist, the bolt was tightened, and I crawled back out from under the sink and tried the faucet. Leak: fixed. My mother gave me a bright smile and a few golf claps. I shut off the water; she'd asked me to come over and take a look at it, saying she would ask my father but that he was staying late at work and that this was an "emergency." Really wasn't one – just a leaky faucet. I do have a hard time saying no to my mother, though.

"That's that," I sighed, packing away Dad's tools into his toolbox. Dad was a master of tools and household fix-its. I didn't bring anything of my own over because I knew Dad already had it all and more. "I should prolly get goin'."

"Oh, no, no! You should at least let me feed you, baby. God knows Melissa still ain't quite up to the task of feedin' _your_ appetite yet." That was true. I could really pack it away and had always been able to. I was a true-blue Curtis man. "And besides, you should stay and say hello to your father. You should take in all the time with your family that you can right now because it's not so easy after you're married."

I figured if she was saying so, then it must be true. Mom guided me to the kitchen table and sat me down, then went back to working on dinner and humming along with whatever came on the radio, even if she didn't know the song. She was serving up pork chops and corn bread and greens when Dad came in, and as soon as they saw each other they seemed to communicate something silently, something I didn't – couldn't – catch. But then the moment passed, and they kissed like they always did when the other got home from work, and Dad set down at the table like always and Mom put his plate in front of him, and mine in front of me. Mom didn't usually go in for eating heavy stuff before a shift, so she just sat down at the table empty-handed.

"Lee fixed the sink," she said to Dad, and Dad nodded his head.

"Good. Been meanin' to do that."

"He did a very professional job of it."

"I'm sure he did."

Parents are always doing this, no matter how old you get – they talk over your head, talk about you like you're not even in the room with them and capable of conversation. I wasn't a baby anymore, I could talk. Dad cleared his throat, wiped his mouth and then just plain stopped eating, and that's when I realized my parents had turned on me, and hey – where the hell were Martha and Joanie?

"What's up?" I asked, still shoveling in food.

Mom pursed her lips. Times had really changed, I realized as I looked at her. When I was a kid, she used to wear this little white uniform to work, with the white tennis shoes and the white hat and white shift dress with pockets in it. Now she wore scrubs, usually in light blue or pink or other pastels. Mom spent a lot of time in the maternity ward, but she took herself too seriously to ever wear those scrubs with the cartoons on them – she had said so herself. Besides, what newborn knew who Winnie the Pooh was, anyways?

"We did have ulterior motives for calling you over," Mom admitted, looking a little ashamed. Mom didn't like lying, even little white lies.

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, yeah?"

"Lee," Dad began seriously, watching me with those cold, blue eyes. "We think there's something you oughta know."

"Okay…" I drawled. "Don't just keep me in suspense here, guys. What's up?"

"Be gentle about it, Darrel," Mom said in a warning tone. That made me feel a bit nervous, but I didn't let it show. Dad nodded.

"Lee," he said again. "We talked to Two-Bit and Bee today." Oh, this could be about a whole litany of things – "They told us Mary's pregnant."- I mean they really could have talked to them about _anything_. They could have talked about the OSU Cowboys, or the weather, or the upcoming election, or the price of milk. They weren't necessarily talking about me and Mary.

Wait.

"Pregnant?" I repeated, barely able to force the word out of my mouth. They both nodded very matter-of-fact. "How'd…how'd that happen?"

"Son, please don't tell me I need to give you the talk again."

"No! It's just…whose?"

"That boy from Massachusetts," Mom said sympathetically. "He's comin' down here."

My heart sank. "He is?" I asked, and they nodded.

"He doesn't know yet," Dad sighed. "She couldn't…bring herself to tell him over the phone, or somethin'." Dad waved a hand. "Least that's what Two-Bit said, I don't really know. But he's comin' for the weddin'."

I looked at Mom, who had this sort of sad, resigned look on her face. Much different than just a few minutes ago. I wondered when the hell I'd become such a let-down. And I wondered, too, when exactly I'd screwed everything up.

It was so clear to me when I was in high school; I just figured I was going to marry Mary Mathews. What I cared about and what I knew and what was so simple for me to recognize from the first moment I started looking at her differently back when I was just…man, in junior high, the plainest thing to me was that for as much time as we spent apart, there was something that was always drawing me closer and closer to her. There are certain things you know when you're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, and certain things you know where you're twenty-six. High up on the list has to do with a little something called invincibility, but that gets knocked down another peg every year as you become less and less stupid, and I'm still pretty stupid. But that was one of the things I knew: Mary and I were written in the goddamn stars.

She told me a few years ago about how when she was a senior in high school, she had a pregnancy scare. Turned out to be nothing. It was the Fourth of July, 1997 – Steve and Evie's twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They always throw a party, but this was a big one. There was an endless stream of food and more fireworks than you could find in an entire roadside pyrotechnics shack. And people, lots of people. It made it easy for us to blend and get a chance to talk before gathering in the backyard to watch the show and cut the cake. I don't remember how exactly it all came up, but it was one of those things that I guess she just figured I ought to know.

"It's not something I've ever wanted to tell either of them. Not even Dallas knows – just Lisa, and you and my best friend."

"Jenny?"

"Yeah. It was scary, and it still kind of is."

"Then why're you tellin' me about it?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I just trust you, and…and I don't know why I'm thinking about it right now, but sometimes…sometimes I wonder if maybe I shoulda waited, like all those sex ed people said. Ya know? I don't know what they tell you guys, but they tell girls that our virginity is this _precious gift_ and we need to wait for marriage to have sex." Then she smiled. "But I don't wanna wait 'til we're married for us to bone."

Mary started laughing, and I just lightly shoved her, which made her laugh harder for some reason, but thinking back on it now, I guess I realize that maybe she'd been thinking the same thing all along, too – that we were just…right. Together, that is.

"Lee?"

"Hm?" I hummed. Mom and Dad stared at me.

"Honey, what are you thinkin'?" Mom asked.

"Lost ya for a sec there."

I nodded. "Right. Sorry. Um. So…this is for real? She's really pregnant?"

They both nodded solemnly. "'Fraid so, bucko," Dad said, his voice soft and apologetic. "Two-Bit told me she's gone over all the options. She wants to keep it, kid."

Wait, _already?_ She's already considered every option. Well, alright then. Mary a few years ago said to me that if it had turned out she had been pregnant her senior year, she wouldn't have hesitated to nip it in the bud, no second thoughts – her words. What was different now? But then I felt like a monster for thinking that way, wishing for even a split second that this woman who I loved – no matter what became of us – would give up her baby just to make _my_ life simpler. And I was disgusted with myself. I knew that was the right reaction, at least. And that things could change, now that she was living with the reality of being pregnant with this child. Oh, man. Oh, _god_.

"Lee, honey? Honey, we still want you to do whatever you think will make you happy. We want you to be happy, we all do. You hearin' me, darling?"

I nodded my head, and my mother patted my hand. Dad wasn't always so great in situations such as these, so he seemed to be choosing to keep his mouth mostly shut, just sitting in the silence with Mom and I, the three of us all feeling a bit awkward.

xXx

"Lee. Wait."

Dad walked down the driveway just as I was getting ready to pull out and head for home. Head back to Melissa, the girl I had spent months convincing myself I was in love with. I think I'm realizing that loving Melissa would be easy – she's low maintenance and easily pleased. Loving Mary has always been hard, and has left me so raw at times that she scares me. I am a coward. An absolute _coward_. I thought I could trick myself into loving Melissa MacDonald because it was easier, there was less risk involved. I am fucking _pathetic_.

I cut the engine and Dad looked in my window, his hand on the door, like he was trying to reach out a little. "What's up?" I asked tiredly.

Dad rubbed the back of his neck, looking out at the neighborhood. He was trying; I appreciated him trying, but I didn't know what he was trying for. Honestly? If I were him, I woulda disowned me. "It's just…"

I sighed. "Just what, Dad?"

He directed his icy blues at me. "You know you can still make this right, don't you?"

xXx

I could make this right.

xXx

"What's got you so upset?"

Melissa stood in the doorway. I sat at the kitchen table. I'd never felt further away from her. I didn't even know this girl, I realized. Why did I trick myself into believing that I loved her enough to go through with this, mistake or not? I swallowed roughly, and shook my head. "Nothin'. Go back to bed."

"I know somethin's on your mind. What is it?"

I shook my head again. "I can't talk about it right now, Mel. I just…I just can't. Can you understand that? Can you understand that, please?"

Melissa reared back a bit like I'd hit her instead of asked her to just give me a minute alone, just a goddamn minute. Look – I know I haven't talked about her that much in comparison to Mary, but Jesus, c'mon. I do live with her. Ain't like…eh, I don't know what it ain't like. "Jesus, okay – "

"Mel, wait." She waited. I sighed. "It's just…everything's just been crazy, ya know?"

She looked sympathetic. Melissa sat down at the table with me and smiled. "I know. Everything's about to change for us, but it's exciting! And we have a little partyin' to do tomorrow…" I had to smile a bit – a bachelor party did sound like a good time. Some of the guys from school were coming in for it, too. "Everything's happened sort of fast, it's okay to feel…overwhelmed, ya know?"

"Yeah, I know," I sighed. I bit my lip. "D'ya know Mary's pregnant?"

Melissa cocked her head. "Mary…?"

"Mary Mathews," I reminded her, a bit upset she didn't remember her. "Ya know, Two-Bit and Bridget's daughter. With the dark hair?"

Recognition flashed in her eyes. "Oh! Yeah, her. Well that's exciting – I didn't know she was married."

"She's not."

"Oh. Oh, well, it's still nice for her. Right?"

I didn't know if it was.

xXx

"For he's a jolly good fell-oh, for he's a jolly good fell-oh, for he's a jolly good feh-el- _low_ …!"

"And so say all of us!" Dallas finished in his dramatic baritone, solo, in the good voice he pretended not to have.

I sarcastically applauded my cousins, and Dallas took a bow and the rest of them bowed their heads at the end of their little performance. Dally and Johnny and Mikey and Vinny and Tommy. All those y-ending nicknames that were shouted throughout our childhood. The five of them just busting into my apartment (which – how in the fuck, but ya know, whatever for the moment), just being the same five obnoxious little fuckers that they've been all their lives. The same dumbasses I've always loved as brothers. The Old Man once told me that even for all the grief these guys' fathers had caused him over their many years, no matter how mad he was with them, no matter how irritated or frustrated, no matter _what_ , he still loved them. Yes – _loved_. He, the great Darrel Curtis, Jr., the rough ol' Okie, could look at those four men and be completely comfortable acknowledging he loved them, even if it was only once in a blue moon. I knew exactly the feeling when these five came in. Seemed the Curtis and Mathews and Randle families were destined to spend all time riding it out with each other.

"Bravo," I drawled. "Dal, yer mother would be proud."

"Fuck off," he smirked.

"Gentlemen," John began, and he threw an arm around my neck and looked out at all currently assembled, "tonight, we embark on a great journey. A _final_ journey. A penultimate soiree. The party to end all parties! Because, my good friends, in two days' time, our brave and fearless leader, our front man, our head honcho, is taking a big step as he embarks further into manhood."

"And so!" Tom dramatically picked up where John left off, "tonight, we are all goin' to party like we ain't ever gonna party ever again!"

"Not after tonight, he won't be!" Vinny yelled, and they all started laughing. I pursed my lips to keep from smiling, and I could feel my ears starting to burn.

"We should prolly get goin'," Mike said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Got a few surprises waitin' for ya."

"Oh… _good_ ," I said sarcastically. "Can't wait!"

I will admit, it was nice to walk into that bar and basically have everyone in the joint know who I was, come up and grab me up in big bear hugs and congratulate me. Guys from school, from the team, they were all there, filling up that tiny space with their gigantic presence. I wondered whose bright idea it had been to use condoms for balloons, knew there was a blowjob joke in there somewhere, but didn't go for it. I just wanted to get my mind off things, and even though this was my bachelor party, it was as good an excuse as any to just drink and do dumb shit with these dumb shits.

"You havin' a good time?" Dally asked me at one point.

"Sure am."

"Good!" He grinned. Dallas wasn't much of a drinker. I guess it fucked with his health or something – don't know how exactly, but he was the master of nursing one beer for about three hours, longer even. "The balloons were my idea."

"I figured!"

The place was loud as hell, and probably hotter than it, too, and I kept thinking it was a good thing none of our dads were here because that would be _real_ trouble. Dallas waved down the bartender to get me another drink. I was starting to feel loose, not drunk, but relaxed. I had a pretty high threshold, if we're being honest – comes with being a decent-sized guy and growing up with a bunch of rednecks.

"Vinny and Tommy wanted to get you a stripper," Dallas grinned. "I figured with this many guys, the poor girl would just get mauled."

I tipped my beer towards him. "Good call. Where are they, anyways?"

"Who fuckin' knows, man! All I know is that since I'm basically the eternally designated sober one, it's my job to make sure you're havin' a good time and getting loaded. Hey, you think we could get food delivered here or somethin'? I want pizza."

I snorted into my beer and shook my head, taking a pull. Dallas sure was something. I watched him for a second – he could have a good time just about anywhere, and even if he couldn't get drunk, he loved partying with drunk people. Always thought they were a riot, and when we were underage would get right up beside them and snicker in their ear, _"You're going to hell!_ " And everybody thought he was the funniest guy, which he probably was. Dark, sure, at times. Dallas could get real dark. I guess he figured he had to balance it. Poor guy almost got himself killed down here last year, wandering around in the rain with low blood sugar or something, and I was the one who ran into Two-Bit, pissed off and wet and looking for his son, at Mom and Dad's house and told him where he was. My family and his have always been intertwined. All of our families are, but for a time there it was just me and Mary, and then all these other kids showed up.

To me, it's always just been me and her.

"I know about your sister!" I yelled suddenly over the music. "I know about Mary. I know about the baby, I know about everything!"

Dallas stared at me, his expression now a cross between disappointment and anger and sadness and confusion all at one time, like when your field goal kicker misses one from twenty yards out and you just can't believe it and you have to sit with it, and to make matters worse it's the end of the season and you have to wait almost a whole year for him to get the opportunity to amend that mistake. I could swear Dallas was going to break down right here in the middle of this bar. I could understand the feeling – he loved his sisters just like I loved mine, and we were brought up to protect them from anyone who hurt them, and I mean anyone. I knew that before Two-Bit kicked my ass, Dally would. And I would have to let him.

"You're a bastard, ya know that?" He yelled back. Suddenly he didn't like me so much, and I doubted he cared anymore if I had a good time. Dallas had probably been hoping I wouldn't bring it up, didn't even know in the first place. He shook his head. "Man, if I didn't know you, if I hadn't spent my whole life growin' up by your side? I'd wanna kill you. Hell, I _do!_ But I can't, man, I can't…" Dally trailed off miserably, still shaking his head, staring at the bar and breathing hard. "I can't because I love you, but she _loves_ you." He looked back up at me, tears threatening to spill over. And he wasn't even drunk. "And I love her. That's the whole point, man," he laughed, but not happily. "That's the whole point, and you missed it.

"Ya know, I hope this really makes you happy. I hope you marry this girl, and you look back on it and think it was a good decision. I'm serious! I want you to be happy. Because if you're not, then all of this is a waste of time. I've had to work really hard to be a good sport about this whole situation, and it's gettin' harder and harder. So I hope to _God_ , G-O-D _God_ , that you think you're doing the right thing. Because then I'll be able to forgive this. _Maybe_."

xXx

"Lee, you need a drink."

"Hey-o! Our boy here doesn't have a drink in his hand! Who let that happen?"

"Lemme buy you a drink, man. C'mon, c'mon, it's one'a yer last free nights. Lemme buy ya a drink."

xXx

"Man, yer gettin' kinda maudlin. What's up with you?"

Tommy was going in and out of focus. I blinked a few times, and then there was just one of him again instead of three. It was rare that I let myself get this drunk, but it was my bachelor party! My last night as a free man and all that jazz. Wasn't I allowed to – wasn't I _supposed_ to – have a little fun? Couldn't I get drunk if I wanted before Melissa put the leash on me? This was the end days, man! These were my end days. I gave Tommy a wobbly smile and raised my glass to him.

"Could ask you the same thing, pardner."

"Yeah, I don't think so – _partner_."

I knew Tommy was never a real cowboy. He enunciated too clearly! Tommy and his twin brother looked a lot like their father – the dark, swirly hair and the deep-set dark eyes, the Semitic features with just a pinch of their mother's looks mixed in for good measure. They swore like their parents, too, but there was something about them that was more Midwest grease monkeys than Okie cowboy. Like me – my Old Man raised a real cowboy, sent him off to play for the one and only Oklahoma State Cowboys like a good father should! Would James Williams the Third send his son to the greatest school with the greatest football team in the nation? I think the fuck not. He's gonna send Mary's poor baby to some east coast private school, buy the kid's way into Harvard or Yale or whatever the fuck, and god knows not'a one of those Ivies has a good ball team, not'a one. He was gonna corrupt that baby. The kid wouldn't grow up knowin' the difference between a Sooner and a Cowboy – or Oklahoma and Texas. Just lump all us southern-ish boys with the rest of the South, that's what those Good-Ol'-Boys do. We're just a bunch of fuckin' rednecks anyways. Who gives a shit?

"Ya know," I slurred, "I'd be a good fuckin' dad."

"Yeah, buddy, I'm sure ya would be. Jesus, your football buddies are fucked, you're soused…"

"Naw, they know what they're doin'. You hear me, though? _I'd be a good dad_ , Tom. Don't she see that?"

"Don't who see that? Melissa?"

"Naw, _Mary_. She's pregnant. That senator's kid knocked 'er up. But he don't care 'bout her the way do, no sir."

Tom started processing all of this information, realization slowly dawning on him. "Mary? Mary _Mathews?_ "

"Yup."

"What're you sayin', Lee? Dude, I hope to God this is just you bein' drunk because…dude, _you're getting married_. You're talkin' 'bout the wrong girl here!"

I giggled. "Nuh- _uh!"_ I sang. "I know zactly who I'm talkin' 'bout! I know you know the story, Tommy Boy. Don't act all _innocent_."

Tom stared at me dead in the eye, then started shaking his head, muttering something about what a shitshow this was and who the fuck got me drunk and if it was our former center he was gonna have to kick his ass and Jesus H. Christ, how did it all get this far? Who let it get this far? I had no answers for him. All I knew was that I'd make a great fucking dad someday.

xXx

"…yeah, he's yers for the night. Sorry, Uncle Darry."

xXx

First thing the next morning I got a bucket of ice-cold water dumped over my head. I was sure I'd barf from shock. I coughed and sputtered awake, squinting my eyes because damn, was it bright. I was a little embarrassed to realize I was at my parent's house, in my old bedroom, and Steve and Sodapop were standing over me, snickering like a couple of hyenas at my misery. I threw the soaked covers off my body and glared up at them.

"Thanks a lot!" I spat. "Get your laughs?"

"Oh, we're just gettin' started," Steve chuckled. "Busy, busy day ahead. Plenty of time for us to fuck with ya even more."

I groaned and fell back on my bed – that's right, there was that stupid fucking rehearsal dinner tonight, and I could only hope that I'd have my shit together by then. Melissa probably would, even if she did get as trashed as I did last night. Women are good at getting their shit together, it seems to me, and it seems that they're usually unfairly tasked with getting everyone else in line, too. Us guys really do get off too easy.

"Shit," I mumbled. " _Shit_."

"Yeah, that's about what we thought you'd say. C'mon – get up, get some coffee, take a shower."

"Think he already did," Steve snickered, and he and Soda laughed themselves out of my room.

I sighed and leaned up against the headboard, soaked through but needing a minute to collect myself and keep back the nausea. I figured I should probably go ahead and strip the sheets so Mom wouldn't have to – she'd been doing that for me for too long, anyways, and even if it wasn't my fault they got soaked, it was still the nice thing to do since it wasn't even my place. My room didn't even look like my room anymore. Mom and Dad had pretty much sterilized it of my presence after I moved out for good after college, but they'd started the process as soon as I started at OSU, very slowly turning it into a guest bedroom. Same with my sisters'. Used to be that I'd covered my walls with band posters, team pennants, shit like that. It was painted blue, and now the walls were taupe. And it was immaculately clean in here, which it never was when I lived here. I usually dumped my football gear and my backpack and my homework on the floor, all of it spilling out everywhere, clothes dirty and clean laying around in piles. I had a stash of nudie mags under my mattress, and was a little alarmed to see one day they were gone. Dad probably had them now. I used to have a bulletin board, too, with awards and ribbons and birthday cards and buttons and pictures pinned up on it. An old polaroid of me and Mary used to hang up there that I now kept at my apartment, hidden away.

Mary's always been this little hidden part of me. As the hot stream from the shower pounded against my back, turning my bright red, I thought about how I'd never bragged about her when I was in high school, or to my buddies on my team at Will Rogers or OSU, and now I realized how ridiculous that was because apparently, everybody knew we had something for each other, so what was the point? Mary was a big girl, and it wasn't like I needed to protect her from my buddies or nothing. I've said it before, and I'll say it again – that woman is fearless.

But then I wondered if she was feeling all that fearless right now with everything going on, the thought of which sent a brief but sharp stab of pain through my head and flipped my stomach.

You know that Tom Petty song? Dad loves Tom Petty. I mean, everyone does, but it's actually kinda…kinda cute how big a fan he is. Dad doesn't like things, so it's nice when he actually expresses interest in something besides football and the other typical dad stuff. Anyways, "Yer So Bad" was playing when I got out of the shower and went looking for coffee, and I just felt like the universe was mocking me.

Feels like the universe is mocking me at every turn these days, though.

Then again, I played a big part in the fucking-over of myself, so I probably shouldn't complain.

"Want a lift, or you stayin' for breakfast?" Dad asked me. Steve and Soda clearly were, and my sisters were watching me with careful eyes while the guys ate and they just waited on me to probably explode, which I was about two seconds away from doing.

"Uh," I breathed, and I accepted a cup of coffee, but my hands were shaking so bad I put the mug right back down. "Ya know, I'm not that hungry."

"Bet you're not," Soda snorted.

"Then again, I'm pretty sure you yakked up everything you've ever eaten last night, so why the hell ain't you starvin'?" Joan asked, and Martha made a face and kicked her under the table for being gross.

"Um. I'm just not." I noticed Mom watching me with careful eyes, and I figured I had two options: either stick around and listen to whatever it was she was obviously about to say, or get the hell out of there. "I think I'm just gonna get some air – it's a nice morning."

The last thing I registered was Mom yelling after me " _Rehearsal is at seven!"_

And then I started running.

xXx

"Hey! How was last night?"

I waved Melissa off and went straight for my keys. She looked at me funny, probably rightfully – I was sweaty and probably stank like liquor and hops even after the shower.

"No time," I rushed out.

There really wasn't. As I ran back down the stairs from our apartment out to the street to where my truck was parked, I realized that I really was running out of time, and that even if it had taken me this long to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do, at least I was finally doing something about it.

xXx

Mary's grandparents lived over on the West side of town, in the same house Aunt Bee had lived in the entire time she'd lived in Tulsa. I'd been there plenty of times before over the years, thought her grandparents were nice folks, knew the route to it from my house in my head from years of sneaking around and playing the Romeo to her Juliet. I didn't pull my truck into the driveway, just parked on the street and ran up the front walk and tried my best to calmly knock on the front door so nobody would get too suspicious. My heart pounded as the old wooden door was pulled open, and Two-Bit sighed when he saw my face, crossing his arms and looking very much the part of the protective father, his fingers probably twitching for a shotgun – or a shiv.

"What're you doin' here, kid?"

I was probably quite the sight. Sweating, nervous, sloppily dressed in last night's clothes. I knew what Two-Bit was probably thinking, and knew that he'd seen this same lovely look before on himself. Hungover and cranky was a common preset for our dads when we were young – they always drank when they got together, and Two-Bit sure drank when he was alone. The shake of little white Aspirin pills in the child-lock bottles and the smell of greasy breakfasts were mainstays. And it sounded like exactly what I needed right now. And then I hoped to god I wouldn't see Dally, because if there's one thing I remember from last night, it was him telling me he wanted to kill me, and I was sure he'd do it the second he saw me.

"I need to see her," I rushed out. "Please."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Oh, you do? And what's so urgent that ya gotta see her right now, huh? Just tell me what it is that's so important – I can take a message."

I narrowed my eyes at him, frustrated, but he just scowled right back at me ten times as hard. I kept forgetting this was his daughter he was protecting – and I was something she needed protected from. I guess. Which, fair. But I was still pissed about it, and the more pissed about it I got, the more frustrated I got, and the more emotional I got, and couldn't he see that I wanted to make things right? I started getting kinda choked up before I could stop myself, and Two-Bit cleared his throat awkwardly. Seems all I could do these days was cry and make people feel weird.

"You hungover?"

I coughed, and his question surprised me enough that I stopped. "Uh. Yeah?" _Duh_.

"Come inside. Got something that could help with that."

I blinked and followed him inside. It seemed like we were the only ones here. I followed him back to the kitchen, where he pointed to a chair and I sat while he threw some concoction together and then slammed it down in front of me and instructed that I drink up, and best do it in one go – if I thought about it too much, I'd be liable to barf all over his in-law's kitchen.

"Do you want me to feel sorry for you?" He asked, brow narrowed. "After you played my daughter and still have the audacity to marry another woman?"

I shook my head. "No," I mumbled. "But I…I do want to make things right. And I think I've figured out how to do that. I love your daughter, Two-Bit. I'm _in_ love with her."

He looked surprised, even though I was sure he already knew that. Maybe just hearing it out loud, from my mouth to his ears, made it all that more real. Two-Bit didn't say anything for a little while, just watched me and puttered around the kitchen and cleaned up after my hangover cure. He was right – I was feeling a little better, physically. Bartenders know all the right moves. But Two-Bit didn't say anything for the longest time, keeping me on edge. Finally, he sighed and asked, "You do, do you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Jesus," he breathed. "Um. You know about her, uh… _predicament_ , don't you?" I nodded. Two-Bit at least pitied me enough to look sad about what he said next. "Well, that's another fresh twist to the knot, kid. Because that kid's father knows, too, and he's got a few concerns about his rep."

I was confused. "What…what's that mean?"

Two-Bit took a wobbly breath and tried to smile, but failed. "Means you prolly ain't the only one gettin' married, kid." And it looked like it just about broke him to say it, too.

XXXXX

 **AN: Thanks for reading!**


	8. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

**Author's Note: Not much to say here, so -**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

"When does he get in?"

"This afternoon."

"Yikes."

I wasn't sure I should be riding when I was with child or whatever, but we weren't really _riding_ – just sorta…strolling around on horses. Me and Annette and Francine, just doing what we always did, trying to feel like things were even the least bit normal. It was a really beautiful day, anyways, with the sun out and shining down on us, making it feel as though it was warmer than it really was, and the trees around Soda's property were all red and orange and yellow. It was a perfect fall day. If it stayed this way through Saturday, it was perfect wedding weather. I didn't dwell on that.

Dad was hanging out at the fence with Steve and Soda, the three of them bystanders to our conversation, too far away to hear but not so far away they couldn't see us. They weren't even trying to hide that they were looking at us, which definitely meant they were talking about us, or me and my predicament.

"You're clear on the plan for tonight, right?" Annie asked me, and I nodded. "Since you're knocked up, you know what that means."

"Nothing wrong with being the designated," I grinned. "At least one of us will be maintaining some dignity tonight."

I wasn't the only one – the other designated for Melissa's bachelorette party was Lisa, so in a strange twist of events, all three of us Mathews' kids would be going without tonight. Usually I liked to have a few, loosen up, but that wasn't an option right now. I was sort of okay with that. Actually, I was very okay with that. James and Lee be damned – this baby was mine, _mine_ , that much was clear, and I wanted to protect it.

"Besides, I know how you country girls get," I went on. "You like to walk around acting all innocent, very clay-of-the-earth, but I know the truth. You put your hair up in those ho braids and tip cows over or whatever the hell is you do out here in the middle of nowhere when you're drunk and looking for fun."

"'Least we're not a bunch of gun-totin' Republicans," Fran grinned, and I tipped my head – touché. "Say, think your boyfriend can hook us up with some Al Gore swag?"

"I think your dad's already being risky enough with the yard sign."

"It was my doin' anyways. Daddy pretty much votes for whoever Uncle Pony votes for."

I could not wait for the rest of my life to be spent talking about politics. Could. Not. Wait. Because god knows James seemed to think of nothing else. I was about done with it right now, too, ready to shoot my head off thinking about Al Gore and George Bush and having to vote on top of everything else. I mean, _really_. Of all the things I already had on my plate, I also had to worry about carrying out my civic duty. Just one more goddamn thing. It's always just one more goddamn thing.

Just then, Soda yelled at us to bring the horses in, so we steered them back towards the barn. "Fran, you take care of Mary's. Thanks, sug."

"How you feelin'?" Dad asked me as I slid off Night Rider. Soda's horses always had the best names. I shrugged, running a hand through my wind-swept hair. I knew I smelled like horse, and wanted – nay, needed - a shower.

"Fine," I breathed. "God, Dad, not like I was up there six months and huge."

"I know," he sighed. Dad watched me carefully from his spot on the fence, leaned up against it with his arms crossed. I didn't like that look on his face, the unsure, worried one. He didn't whip that one out just for nothin'. "You still goin' tonight?"

I nodded. "'Course. It's the right thing to do."

"Yeah, yeah." Steve nudged him and smiled that smile that said they were up to something, and Dad smirked. "When's that boy of yers get in? Four-ish?" I nodded. "Perfect. He's gon' get to know us tonight."

I blanched. "The hell does that mean?"

Steve laughed. "Means that if he's gonna try and worm his way into this family, then that means he has to go through a bit of, uh…oh, what's the phrase I'm lookin' for…."

"Interview process," Soda supplied, smile a mile wide. "Don't worry, Mary honey, Jaq and Evie put Melissa through the same thing, but I don't think she caught on to that bein' what it was. I think she just thought they were bein' nice."

"James won't get the same impression," Dad winked. "He'll know what it is."

I rolled my eyes. "You're all terrible. You know that?"

"Hell yeah, we do!" Soda yelled, and they all started hollering, and me and Annie and Francine all just looked at each other and shook our heads.

xXx

"What's that?"

Lisa grinned conspiratorially at me from her spot on the floor. She was surrounded by little clippings and photos – what looked to be some of our mother's memorabilia. Mom's room wasn't all that different from what it was back when she lived here, and she'd left some stuff behind from her high school days. Lisa and I had seen little bits and pieces of it over the years, but most of Mom's stuff was back home in New York, so we really felt no need to go digging here, figuring we wouldn't find much. I guess Lisa had, though.

"C'mere – I jimmied the lock on this drawer in the desk. It's full of this stuff." I sat down beside Lisa as she eagerly read to me from an old newspaper clipping written by a Mrs. Janine Johnston. "' _…the biggest buzz of the night surrounds our newly crowned queen! Miss Stevens, who came to the dance with her friends – 'stag', is what the kids call it – is the first young lady to be crowned without a date! But after the dance, Miss Stevens was seen – tiara and all – gallivanting around town with one Two-Bit Mathews, Steven Randle, and Evelyn Martin, the latter two of whom are a known couple. Miss Stevens and Mr. Mathews have also become something of a known commodity, so the question arises: Why, then, was Miss Stevens dateless? Alas, this reporter has no answer to THAT particular question.'"_

We both cracked up. Lisa let me get a look at the rest of the article, dated from May of 1968 under the Society section. I guess it was about senior prom night. I saw Cherry Valance, Randy Adderson, and Vickie Harper's names in there – I guess Vickie had married that George Washburn guy. I swallowed and pushed thoughts of Vickie and aborted babies to the back of my mind. "This is amazing," I laughed, and Lisa nodded her head with enthusiasm.

"There's more where that came from." She pulled the drawer open wider and started rooting around. "I have no idea why she locked all this up – it's great. Here, here's a playbill from the year she was in _Oklahoma!_ Ooh! – Letters addressed to Paul McCartney! Oh, I can't _believe_ this!"

Along with the playbill and the letters to Macca, there was another playbill for a production of _Anything Goes_ , an invitation to someone named Penny's birthday party, a Black Panther Party pin, a few pictures from various school dances, a swatch of tie-dye, a dainty-looking class ring, a few very expired condoms, a booklet of Beatles postcards, an old patch for a DX gas station, a copy of class schedules from her junior and senior years at Will Rogers High School, some pink paint swatches in various shades, old dress and blouse patterns, an essay on _Their Eyes Were Watching God_ , a flyer for a cotillion ball of sorts, a few tickets to high school football games, a few tickets to high school baseball games from Dad's senior season, corny but cute valentine's cards from Cherry and Marcia and Missy, a somewhat-depleted coupon book for a long-gone department store, a handwritten copy of the lyrics to "Queen Jane Approximately", a postcard with an Andy Warhol cat print on it, a postcard with the Golden Gate Bridge on it dated July 1967, a friendship bracelet, a blue ribbon for a little tennis tournament at the country club in the doubles competition, a blue ribbon for the high school talent show, a red ribbon for the state fair baking competition, a little booklet filled with pressed flowers, a big yellow 'W' that she probably earned from cheerleading to match Daddy's baseball letter, a map of Vietnam, an article about the end of a serial murder case, a Deadhead bear patch, sheet music for the song "Many a New Day", sheet music for a piano arrangement of "Moon River", a dance card with names of boys I'd never heard of, a few more clippings of articles from that society section of the paper about Mom and her Yenta friends, a Bobby Kennedy campaign pin, movie stubs for _The Great Race_ and _Meet Me in St. Louis_ and _The Graduate_ and _Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf_ , a torn-off slip of paper that read: " _Bee Stevens & Vickie Harper know each other. Here's to hoping Vickie won't tell that big mouth about what happened – god knows she'd spill the whole damn thing_", and finally, a note that read: _"Meet me out by the football field after school lets out. I'll keep myself outta trouble so you don't have to wait on me. – Two-Bit"_

It was a lot. It was our mother's entire time in Tulsa, is what it felt like.

"Wow," I breathed.

"I know," Lisa chuckled. "You ever forget that Mom and Daddy are, like, people? That they used to have lives and do stuff and all that?"

"Maybe," I shrugged. "I dunno, I sorta feel like Mom never stopped doing stuff. Like, maybe she didn't really work anymore after a while, but she didn't just stop. And Dad, he's always worked."

"Yeah, but I'm not just talking about work and all the social groups. They used to just be people, like, normal people."

"You're not making sense. They're still normal people. They're just…old now."

Lisa sighed; clearly her point was lost on me, or she was just having trouble communicating it. "You don't think we're, like, invading her privacy, do you?"

"I don't know," I sighed. "It's neat stuff, though – I don't see why she locked it up."

"Well, probably didn't want Grandpa finding those condoms." And we both laughed again. Then she continued more gently, "There are just pieces of them everywhere. Like, one day your kid's gonna find little things about you and laugh about them. I dunno. I guess that's kinda what I'm trying to say – they were people then just like they're people now, but now they're different people."

"Yeah," I whispered. "I guess they are. Do you think they miss who they were?"

Lisa sighed and considered the ribbons and the notes and the pictures of our mother, young and baby-faced and smiling, untouched by age and motherhood, surrounded by friends and swathed in fashionably modest dresses of pastel fabric and tulle. I knew that Lisa was comparing that girl in the pictures to the fifty-year-old woman who was our mother, still beautiful, still smiling, but with crow's feet and wider hips. Her hair still seemed to have a mind of its own, no matter what year it was.

I wondered if all of this was going to happen to me.

I wondered who I would become once this baby got here.

I wondered if the Mary I was now would just become lost to time, just like Bridget Stevens had.

"I would," Lisa said with a nod of the head. "And in another twenty years, I'm sure they'll miss who they are now. Adults are always complaining about not being young anymore – who's to say she won't think fifty's young when she's seventy?"

xXx

"Be nice, Dad, _please._ "

"I am bein' nice! This is about as nice as I'm gonna get, far as this boy is concerned."

I'm not even quite sure why he had insisted on coming, but the cross-armed, puffed-chest, defiant stance certainly didn't _look_ nice, but I don't think James noticed right away because he was looking down at his pager or phone or something, and Dad's ire was initially lost to him. I was starting to think James might just run into us because it didn't look as if he'd ever look up, but as if he knew I was there, his head shot up and he smiled.

"Mary, hey," he greeted, and he kissed my cheek.

James and I made quite the pair. He was tall, almost always in a suit or a button-down and jeans, with slicked-back auburn hair and blue eyes to die for. Say what you want about him, but his eyes were _gorgeous._ And I was starting to think maybe I had a thing for guys with blue eyes, but that's neither here nor there. Dad cleared his throat, and I looked up at him and his expectant expression, eyebrow raised and awaiting an introduction.

"Dad, this is James Williams," I introduced. "James, this is my father, Two – uh, Keith Mathews."

James smiled at my father and they shook hands. Dad and his buddies judged other men's character based on three things: what they drank, if they played cards, and if they had a good handshake. There were other, lesser tests, but these were the Big Three. I couldn't quite tell from Dad's expression if James had passed this first test, but I knew he wasn't much of a cards player, and I wasn't quite sure if his preferred drink would impress them. Guess we'd find out after tonight. Maybe two out of three wasn't bad, but I knew James would have to have more going for him than a good handshake to earn my father's respect.

"Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Mathews."

"Likewise," Dad drawled. "Nice of you to come down. No better place to meet the family than a wedding."

James laughed. He really had no idea what he was in for.

xXx

"I was getting some serious _Deliverance_ vibes from some of those people at the airport. Hillbillies know about air travel?"

I rolled my eyes; James was sure from Massachusetts. "Buddy, you're in Oklahoma. Two things: one – this is cowboy country, and it's not the deep south, even if it is a red state. Two – and this one's important – you're in _Tulsa_ , which is, ya know, a major metropolitan area. So just because you've never seen a man wear a cowboy hat out in public doesn't mean they're _completely_ uncultured."

James smiled at me as he loosened his tie. "Your father got a cowboy hat?"

"More than one," I informed him. "Boots and bolo ties to match. He's an Okie through and through – and if you're not careful, he'll trick you into eating bull testicles. Watch your ass tonight."

James was staying in a nearby hotel, the Ambassador, insisting he didn't want to impose on my grandparents, especially since he didn't even know any of my family. I'd stepped foot in the Ambassador maybe once in the entire time my family had been coming down here, and it definitely lived up to its reputation. You could see the Arkansas River from the window, and if I used my imagination, I could imagine Tulsa was the same metropolis that New York was, just the southwest version, and when the sun would go down, the lights would dance on the water and the sun sinking low on the horizon would make for a beautiful sunset. We'd only come here so James could checked in and changed, Dad leaving us with strict orders to get back to the house by six-thirty so I could head to Melissa's bachelorette party with Lisa and Dad and his buddies could start in on their torture.

I also wanted to break the news before we went back. Mom and Dad thought I might as well tell him sooner rather than later. Probably a smart idea.

"What's he do again?"

"He owns a bar. That's what he's always done. Well, when he got back from Vietnam, he did a bunch of odd jobs, but that's what he's been doing for as long as I can remember."

"My parents said they saw your mom in a show once, in a production of _The Music Man._ Said she was absolutely wonderful."

I was five when she did that. I remember going to see her, remember sitting very quietly in my seat next to my father and just soaking in everything, marveling at her, and I remember thinking all those years ago that my mother had to be the coolest mom on the planet. To this day, I maintain that she's a better Marian that Barbara Cook and Shirley Jones combined, but that's just my opinion. "Small world," I smiled.

"I'm excited to meet her," he went on. "Kinda embarrassed to say I did a quick web search of her – she's pretty accomplished, I don't get why people don't talk about her more."

"She hasn't done anything in a while," I shrugged. "She did more shows when we were younger. It got harder for her after she had Lisa."

"I'm excited to meet your siblings, too. I can't wait for our families to meet, actually. It's funny, cuz I can tell our mothers would get along great, but I have no idea what my dad's gonna make of your dad. Keith Mathews sure is something, and I've only known him an hour." Understatement. He'd talked our ears off on the drive over here, and James had patiently listened as he went on about everything from baseball to Bob Dylan to landmarks around Tulsa. "His buddies sound like a wild time."

"Yeah," I sighed. "James. James, honey, I need to tell ya something."

He stopped buttoning his shirt. I looked at him, really looked at him; he was gorgeous, for sure. I really could get lost in those eyes. He was tall and sweet-looking, and looked nothing like a lawyer; those eyes were too kind. I didn't like how he was talking about my father, how he'd already painted him as the outcast, or how he'd talked about this place that was like a second home to me. James knew nothing but Washington DC and Massachusetts and east coast politics and living as the son of a senator. He didn't swing wildly between two worlds, and I doubted he'd ever loved someone who lived hundreds of miles away.

"What's up?"

"Sit down." He sat down. "The reason I called you – it wasn't to make you come down here, even if it's great you came."

"Then why?"

I grabbed his hand and bit my lip, looking down at my stomach and sighing. His eyes widened; somehow, that said it all.

"How…?"

"How do you _think?_ "

He sighed. "Is this a bad thing?" James asked. "Is this something we need to…take care of?"

"I'm not getting rid of it, if that's what you're asking." I almost said something about being Catholic, but that didn't feel right, even though a big part of the reason I'd decided to keep it was because I thought of the Virgin Lady, and somewhere in the back of my mind, she'd whispered and told me that I needed to see this through. I trusted Her. "But there's more to this. I need you to know something else."

"There's _more?_ " He asked, astounded, and I nodded.

"There's something you need to know about Lee Curtis," I told him.

xXx

I told him.

I told him that I'd loved Lee Curtis for as long as I could remember. I told him how heartbroken I'd been when I'd learned he was getting married. I told him I was confused and caught up, and this was complicating things.

"I still feel like I'm just getting to know you," I admitted softly. "You're a great guy, but I don't know yet if I can marry you, not when the only thing I'm sure of these days is the confusion."

James stared at me. "Well, now I'm confused – are you breaking up with me, even though you're having my baby?"

I blinked. "Are we even _together?_ We've been dating around, sure, and clearly we've…" I couldn't say _sex_ for whatever reason right now, but that's what I was getting at. "The timing's just all _wrong_. I know all of this sounds bad, but I'm telling you this because Lee is never going to be mine, but I'm hoping that one day I can get over him. It's just that I don't know what we're supposed to do now. I'm not giving up this kid, but I don't know where I stand with you. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah," he breathed. "I…I guess, Mary. But. But, uh. You know this doesn't look great, right? For me or my dad, if anyone finds out. They'll think my old man raised up a womanizer who knocks up a girl and then leaves her to clean up the mess."

"So…what do we do?" I asked miserably. James shrugged.

"Lie?" I furrowed my brow. "I mean…I like you, Mary. A lot. And I think you like me – maybe not as much as you like _Lee Curtis_ , but at least a little bit. So maybe we don't know if we _love_ each other yet or not, maybe you don't know if you ever _could_ love me, but…this is our kid. We didn't mean for this to happen, no, but it did, and we owe it to this kid to try. So, I guess we just fake it 'til we make it."

"You're saying we should get married anyway," I said quietly, realization dawning on me. "You just…you want to just get married and see where it all goes? That's crazy."

"I don't see what else we're supposed to do. You do get I've got a lot at stake here, right? My brothers and I have been looking out for our dad our whole lives. We can't fuck up. Local politics is a bitch, and this is just the sort of thing that would make people think he's no better than white trash, and they don't want to send white trash to Capitol Hill. Ya know?"

I sighed through my nose. Reputation, I was learning, from him and my mother, must be the most important thing. You never get a second chance at a first impression, so you'd better not fuck it up, even years after the fact. "I know," I ground out, trying to stay calm. "I think we need to think about this a little more. Okay?"

James ran a hand down his face. "Yeah, okay."

"And in the meantime, I'm gonna go to Horse Girl's bachelorette party, and you're going to find out just how wild my dad and his buddies are."

We stood up. Nothing felt solved, but at least he knew. At least he knew, because everybody else sure did. James could certainly appreciate my ability to leak news. "Okay," he sighed. "Then that's what we'll do."

xXx

The next morning, Mom wanted to know all the details. She was always pressing me and Lisa for gossip, and Lisa was the one eager to give this morning. It had been a pretty typical bachelorette party, hopping around from bar to bar while Melissa wore a little veil on her head and a white lace dress, a pre-wedding get-up, and all her friends got absolutely trashed while Lisa, Annette, Fran, Martha, Joan, and I watched on at their little clique. They had no idea, just absolutely _no idea_ , what was going on behind the scenes, not even Melissa, which I felt a little bad about, but what do you want me to say? I'm in love with her fiancé. Probably.

"One of her friends would just _not. Stop._ Throwing up," Lisa laughed. "Annie stuck with her for ten minutes and then just gave up."

"Well, she's not known for her bedside manner, is she?" Mom asked, taking a sip of her coffee. Dallas snorted softly, then went back to glumly resting his head in his hand. Something had happened last night at Lee's bachelor party, but he wasn't talking about it. Mom had quit trying to pry it out of him.

xXx

"Mary?"

I opened up the bedroom door and saw Mom and Dad on the other side, and I sighed, getting ready for…whatever the hell it was they were about to throw my way. "Yes?"

"Is James coming tonight?" I shook my head.

"He can't. He has to do some distance work on the case he's on. He'll be at the wedding, though. How was your night with him, Dad?"

Dad rolled his eyes. He was half-ready for the rehearsal dinner, while Mom was exactly zero percent ready, but that wasn't unusual – Mom was almost always making us late. I myself was just putting the finishing touches on, getting my earrings in, and I turned and let Mom fasten my necklace. "Guy can't play a decent hand of cards to save his _life_." I smirked. "How the hell do ya get through life like that?"

"Keith. The reason we're here."

"Oh – right." Dad sighed. "Lee came by earlier."

My eyes widened. "He did?" I choked out. "Wha…why?"

"Came to see you," he said. "Says he knows how to 'make things right', whatever that means."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I shrieked. "He wanted to see me, why didn't you let him?"

"Honey, it would just confuse things," my mother sighed. "He was…hungover and just emotional about god knows what, everything, and…well, he needs to learn from his mistakes," she said defiantly. "He's the one missing out on a good thing. He made his bed, he lies in it." My mouth quivered like it wanted to smile, and I was glad to hear my mother say that, but I was still pissed they hadn't let him see me.

"He also came by pretty early, and from what I remember, you spent the better part of the morning with your head hanging in the toilet, so…"

My stomach lurched at the reminder of my morning sickness, and I scowled and slammed the door in their faces. Dad tried to yell through the door – " _I thought you wouldn't want any visitors!"_ – and Lisa just laughed at my plight as she put on her shoes.

xXx

"Do you still hate me?"

Different night, different year, different time and space. Different dock, too. Same Tulsa. Mom and Dad and all their friends and my grandparents all said it had changed over the years, but I wasn't here often enough to really tell. It was just where my dad was from. That's all it was. I looked at him, confused. "Still?" I repeated. "When did I hate you?"

Dad came to stand beside me, shoulder-to-shoulder, and shrugged. "Long time ago, when you were a kid. I told you not to see Lee, and you said you hated me."

"Oh," I said. "Well, I remember that. But I don't remember telling you I hated you. So, to answer your question – no. I don't hate you."

"Really? Not even now, when he's about to marry some other girl?"

I leaned her hip on the rail and looked out at the docked boats, bobbing up and down. This country club atmosphere was certainly a step up for Darry. For all of us - that was for _damn_ sure. Dad almost looked a bit out of place, with his long greying hair and scruff, still a hippie. Mom always fit right into these sorts of places. She made sure Lisa and I did, too. I wondered if people looked at me in this setting and thought I looked like I belonged here. I'm not sure I felt like I did. I felt like some sort of tramp as of late, no matter what anyone else says. "Well, I mean, he was all the way out here, and I was all the way out there…it was bound to happen."

"You told me the two of you had known – were _positive,_ for a long time – that you loved each other."

"We do."

"Yeah, but not like _this_. Not like he's just _family_."

I glanced at him. "What are you getting at? Dad, you were right to stop me. It never would have worked," I said, mumbling the last part. Daddy smirked.

"Say that again – that part about me being right."

I snorted. "Shut up," I laughed.

"No way! 'Cording to you, kid, I'm right only once in a blue moon." He glanced up at the sky. "Speakin' of the moon…"

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" I asked plainly, looking up at it with him. "Now _that's_ a moon."

"Harvest," Daddy added, nodding. "Pullin' out all the stops, dahlin'."

I edged closer to him, both of us resting our forearms on the railing and staring up. "Daddy?"

Dad raised an eyebrow and looked down at me. " _'Daddy'_?" He repeated.

I ignored him. "What do you think of James?"

Dad sighed, didn't say anything for a minute as he tried to work out what to say. "Whatta I think? He ain't no Lee Curtis, that's what I think."

I shook my head. "Unbelievable."

"I know I am."

"That wasn't a compliment." I paused. "I was too late."

"Too late for what?"

I knew I was starting to get a little weepy, but I held back. Damn these hormones. "To...to…you _know_."

"I do," he said, and he did. "I'm sorry, Mary. I'm sorry all of this is happenin' to you. I wish I knew how to make it better. I wish to God I did."

Wasn't that just everything? Hearing him say that meant a lot, no matter if it meant that nothing would happen. Just the thought that he would do something if he could – that was something. That was really something. He kissed the side of my head and squeezed my shoulders, and wrongly thinking that I wanted to be alone, started to head back for the country club, and when I looked up, I could see Mom lingering on the porch with Dallas and Lisa, and suddenly my throat felt even tighter. The four of them – no matter how we fought, no matter how annoying Dad and Dally were, no matter how young Lisa sometimes seemed, no matter how uptight Mom could be, I knew I had them. I knew I had them, I _knew_ that. Had it ever really been a question?

"Dad?"

Dad stopped. He always did. He never walked away. Just always, always there.

"Yeah, kid."

"You wanna go for a walk? I…I don't wanna go back in."

It became clear that Mom had been watching us because when Dad stopped, when I said his name, she stopped trying to hide it. She stared down at us with her arms crossed, and she had stopped talking to my siblings. "Sure, honey," Dad grinned, and he backtracked to me and grabbed my hand when Mom called,

"Mind if we tag along?"

Dad looked at me for the OK, and I nodded. "Sure thing!"

Mom could surprise you sometimes. Dad was always the fun parent growing up, the one who would take us to movies on a school night and order pizza when Mom wasn't home and wasn't afraid to leave out the dirty details in all of his stories; who would come home with kittens that had been born in the back alley. But Mom – for as steady as she was, for all her propriety, was the one who would do the funny strip-teases with the other moms and have us all pealing with laughter; the one who would turn on the radio while she was in the kitchen and grab your hands and sing and dance with you – really belt it out like she knew she was damn good at it, and she was. She and Dad were a balancing act, both of them good cop and bad cop, a fearsome duo in Trivial Pursuit, and when apart almost didn't seem like themselves without the other.

Oh, _god_ , how I wished I could have with James what they have with each other. And we're at the rehearsal dinner for the one guy I _do_ have that with.

"Lisa, where are yer shoes?" Dad asked, looking down at my sister's feet as the five of us made our way around the perimeter, Dad still holding my hand.

"Checked 'em. They were hurtin' my feet like _crazy_."

Dallas looked down at her feet in disgust. "Yeah, but, that means the rest of gotta see those blister-covered things. Are yer feet ever not bleeding?"

"Nup."

"You're missing a good party," Mom told me and Dad.

"So're you," Dad shot back. "'Least ya are now. 'Sides, all the important stuff is over. We'll say bye later."

I didn't want to say goodbye. I didn't want today to end. Didn't want it to become tomorrow.

"These things are always so boring," Dad continued, loosening his tie. "'Member ours?"

"It wasn't boring," Mom insisted. "It was very nice. I still can't believe they let us get married in a church, what with this one tagging along," and she playfully nudged my side. I had to smile a little. "Your mother would have had a cow if we hadn't, anyway."

"Your anniversary sure wasn't boring," Dallas grinned. Mom and Dad had just celebrated twenty-five years back in June. "I don't think I've ever seen that many drunk people over forty-five before."

"I wasn't _drunk_ – "

"Yes, you were," Dad chuckled. "You _totally_ were. You have to be in order for Evie to talk you into doing _that_ act – "

"Alright, that's enough," Mom huffed, but she was trying not to laugh, too. Mom didn't have to get drunk to get up to any shenanigans with the rest of the moms. When Mom got drunk, she'd drape herself across the piano like some sort of floozy and sing all of "La Vie En Rose" in a sultry, smoky voice, or stand up there and sing the opening number to _Bye-Bye Birdie_ in a dead-on impression of Ann-Margret, and then be completely unable to do either when she was sober. It was her drunk superpower, and a hit at parties. See? Mom can loosen up. But she doesn't get drunk that often, so it's a rarity she does either of those numbers.

"We had a nice wedding," Mom went on, insisting. "Nicer than any rehearsal dinner or wedding I've ever been to. It was a pretty day, and everybody was happy, and we were happy. Your sister brought me sunflowers, remember that? I remember feeling so heavy and sick, even though when I see myself in pictures I don't look half as big as I remember, and I suddenly decided I hated my bouquet, and your sister went out and found those for me."

"I didn't know that part," Dad said. "I thought the sunflowers were Plan A."

"Plan B," she confirmed. The three of us walked beside our parents in the moonlight, just listening to them talk. Parents are annoying and all, but our parents were always so in-synch with each other, getting lost in their own little world, and they were fun to listen to when they reminisced, which is often – maybe that's common with older loves. "And just like that, everything fell into place, and I was ready to face you."

"Good thing, too," Dad nodded. "I wasn't in the mood to get jilted that day. I'd'a never heard the end of it from the guys if you had, either."

"I suppose it was very considerate of me to marry you, wasn't it?"

Dallas huffed a laugh and shook his head. "Sounds like a nice time. Wish I coulda been there."

"Nah," Dad sneered. "Weddings are just big shows. Ya get up there just to tell everybody somethin' they already know. They're expensive as hell, and stressful as hell, and – "

"And very nice," Mom finished, but I don't think that was what Dad was going for. "There's flowers and dancing and people coming together in the name of true love."

"Oh, _gross_ ," Dallas sneered. We'd circled back around. The five of stood at the base of the club patio staircase, not making a move to head back up to the party just yet. I held tighter to Dad's hand, and he kept on holding mine even though I was probably cutting off his circulation, which was nice of him to do.

"We ready for tomorrow?" Dallas asked us all.

The five of us made eye contact with each other in turn, and Lisa nudged me because the question was probably directed mostly at me, which – fair. I took a deep breath, and really thought about it. Weddings were stressful and expensive; they had flowers and dancing. They were all about true love; they were about getting up there and telling the whole world something they already know, that you love the other person up there with you. What was the punishment for that being a lie? It had to be more than divorce. There had to be more, a punishment to fit the crime about lying to the universe about who your true love was. If that's the case, looks like Lee and I have even more bullshit to look forward to.

We all make mistakes. We all make choices, too. And if I really love him, I had to respect this one.

"Yeah," I whispered. "We're ready."

xXx

I've done some stupid things. I mean really stupid things. Stupid, teenage-level dangerous. The things you do when you think you're invincible, immortal. And what I did that night was stupid. It was one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my little life.

The night before Lee Curtis got married, I snuck out with him.

It may have been stupid, but I can't say it didn't feel right.

After the rehearsal dinner, I'd done the polite, familial thing and hugged him like he was my lame cousin or something, trying to pretend like all of this was okay because I guess it had to be, and Lee slipped a note into my dress (It has _pockets!)_ and winked at me. Then when I got back to my grandparents' house, I went into the bedroom I was sharing with my sister, my mother's old bedroom, and read it.

"What's that?" Lisa asked. She was brushing her hair. I envied her hair – wavy and strawberry blonde. She looked like our aunt, Dad's little sister. My hair was black and kinky, and people often marveled that Lisa and I were sisters. We sometimes did, too.

"A note," I said, sounding dumbfounded.

It said that he wanted to meet with me.

Tonight.

Like we were in some crazy rom-com.

My heart fluttered in my chest. It jumped up into my throat, and then plummeted into my stomach on repeat. Up and down, up and down, up and down and around. Sioxsie and the Banshees were playing on the radio softly, even though they're the sort of band you're supposed to blast so loud you risk wrecking your speakers. (" _All of it was made for you and me…Let's take a ride and see what's mine…"_ Lisa sang along quietly.)

"Who's it from?" My sister asked.

I swallowed. There was a lump in my throat. "Lee," I squeaked.

I heard Lisa's footsteps coming towards me. She snagged the note out of my hand and held it out of my reach, her eyes quickly scanning the little slip of paper and then widening once she had finished. "Woah," she breathed. "You should go."

"I _should?"_

"He asked you to, Mary."

Lisa thought it was that simple. Of course, it _wasn't_ , but she helped me sneak out of the house anyways, even though I'd never needed help before. When I found him sitting in the nearby park, looking all lonely on that bench, I remembered something: Easter, at least a decade ago now, I guess. He and I sitting on that porch swing together. His hair wasn't quite so blond now, but his eyes were still that same piercing blue. He looked a lot like his father. I guess that meant he looked like Darrel Curtis, Senior, too. I wouldn't know, exactly. I'd only seen him in pictures, and he wasn't exactly a part of my particular family history.

"Hey," I said, and sat down without him having to even ask.

"Hey," he said back. "Hi, Mary."

"Hi, Lee." I smirked, and he smiled back. He had really straight teeth. I remember having braces at the exact same time as him. I remember sharing a lot of my childhood with him. Since our dads and their friends were inseparable, so were the rest of us. He graduated only a year before I did. We remember when nearly all the other kids were born. We remember that weird void that was left when Uncle Soda's wife left. We have grown up together, and I should be happy for him. I should be, but I'm not.

"Remember the last time we came down here for Easter?" I asked.

"Of course I do," Lee whispered.

"Remember what our dads did?"

He gave a soft snort. "I think we might have the most embarrassing dads on the planet."

"Well, Francine has Uncle Soda."

"Fair enough."

I felt sick with nerves. "Lee, what did you want to meet for?"

I knew that look on his face. In as many ways as he was like Uncle Darry, he was just as unlike him. Darry never came across this soft. "I'm gettin' married tomorrow."

"Right. That's what we all came down here for."

"Yeah. But I ain't gettin' married to you."

I took in a sharp, nearly silent inhale. "Do you…do you want to….? What are you saying?"

I was hoping he was saying that he was going to call the whole thing off, but for some reason, I doubted that. In fact, if he had, I'd be wondering if I was really talking to Lee Curtis at all. Lee looked me right in the eye, and I knew exactly what he was saying. I grabbed his hand with mine and hoped and maybe even _prayed_ for him to say what I still wanted him to. For him to say that he was going to call the whole thing off and come clean, that all of this was just a mistake, that he was going to forget about familial duty and think about himself and think about _us_ , as unlikely as I knew that would be. Instead, he said, "I know a place where we can be alone."

I drew my brow in. "What? Lee, we're alone now."

"No," he laughed a little, "I mean… _alone_."

And then it really dawned on me. I put my other hand on his cheek, felt him lean into the touch, and rubbed his stubble with the pad of my thumb. Look – I've had sex with plenty of men. I know the signs. I know what's going to happen before it happens. So _yes_ , it was irresponsible and stupid and probably cruel and I'm probably going to Hell, but I looked into his blue, blue eyes and couldn't say no. I kissed him for all I was worth and told him a thousand times _yes, yes, yes_ and let him corral me into his truck so we could drive off and he could show me to the place where we could be well and truly alone. It's funny that I was able to love someone for so long without ever having had sex with them, and when he dropped his pants, I learned exactly what I'd been missin'.

xXx

To think Melissa Macdonald was going to get _that_ all to herself.

xXx

"Tell me about it."

I smiled into the pillow; Lisa was laying next to me, and was now demanding details from my little excursion. Usually, I'd tell her to put a sock in it and let me sleep, but Lisa was the only other person who knew about this, and probably the only other person who _should_ know about this, and by God, did I want to talk about Lee Curtis and his magical dick with somebody.

"Lisa," I breathed, "he's amazing. He's a…a _god_. How can I ever go back to anyone else after that?"

My virgin sister just giddily grinned; she lived for this shit. "Hell if I know. Oh, Mary," she said sadly. "Sister, sister. I am so sorry."

Lisa flung her arm around me and hugged me, and, surprised, I hugged her back with my free arm and let myself be reassured by my crazy, annoying, beautiful little sister.

XXXXX

 **AN: There's only two chapters left, but this story's not quite done yet….**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	9. Dear Boy

**Author's Note: Well, shit. I suck. Sorry for my extremely prolonged absence. But I guess it's finally time to return to the wonderfully fucked-up lives of Lee Curtis and Mary Mathews. So – shall we?**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

I took Mary and I out to the middle of nowhere, the same middle of nowhere we'd been going to all our lives to be together, just she and I, just her and me. The point of me doing what I did was so I could tell her – yes. Yes, it was her.

I just had to figure out a few logistics first.

xXx

The morning of my wedding, I woke up with a funny feeling in my stomach, and I couldn't pinpoint the cause. I sat up and blearily wiped my hand down my face, taking stock of my situation: I'd come home – to my childhood home, letting Melissa have the apartment to herself so I wouldn't have to see her, both avoiding her and letting her believe I was eager to see her for the first time in her dress as she walked down the aisle – after being with Mary. I'd passed Dad in the hallway on the way to my room with a stupid grin on my face, and he narrowed his brows at me, but didn't say anything as I walked by, practically floating and then happily collapsing onto my bed. Mary had been everything I'd expected she would be. More.

We knew there were still roadblocks. She was still going to have this baby. She was probably going to marry James, at least for a little while, to protect themselves against any bullshit, and I wanted that for her. I guess a baby out of wedlock was somehow worse than a divorce. That's how she'd explained it to me as she'd mindlessly played with my hair, traced her fingers down my bare chest. There was still that hurdle. But we'd taken care of one of them – or, I was going to. I just had to…had to do it. Just had to force myself to go out there and say to everybody that there wasn't going to be a wedding today. The thought of having to do that…in my mind, I knew it was what had to happen, but it made the pain in my stomach sharper.

I tried to ignore it as I got ready, showering and brushing my teeth and shaving and getting dressed, willing the feeling and the nerves to go away. My entire family was in my parents' living room, my uncles already dressed and Mom and Martha and Joan standing around in robes waiting to get ready, while my cousins and Aunt Evie and Aunt Rose were already dolled up and ready to go. I didn't see any of the Mathews family, so they either weren't here yet or were strategically keeping their distance. I wouldn't blame them, not a bit.

Mary had told James about us. Not the sex – but the other stuff. The history we have. I didn't know if he and I should be in the same room together.

I cleared my throat, shoving my hands in my jeans as everybody turned to look at me expectantly. "Uh. Hey."

I watched Mom's face closely. She watched on, expectant, and I took a deep breath, ready to say the magic words, tell them there wasn't going to be any wedding today, tell them all why even though they all apparently already knew. But then that stabbing pain in my gut got worse, and when I opened my mouth, instead of words, warm, oozy blood dribbled out and my mother screamed.

xXx

"Holy shit!"

"Soda, get under his other arm. Nice and easy, let's set 'im down."

"Oh, god…."

"Jesus Christ, somebody call an ambulance or something!"

xXx

I came to in the back of an ambulance, Mom and Dad both hovering over me, staring down worriedly. There was a big EMT on either side of them. I groaned. "Wha'…."

"Hush," Mom kindly scolded. "Don't talk."

"Mm. Th-th'r's n-not – "

"Not what?" Dad asked flatly.

"Th-th'r's not g'na be a…a weddin'," I slurred out.

"We know," Mom said soothingly, putting a hand on my shoulder. "We know. Now stop talkin', sug'."

xXx

See, I wasn't really hoping for anything dramatic. No objections from the crowd, no ditching Melissa at the altar, no running off with Mary from the venue and hopping into the car with the "Just Married!" chalked on the back – this wasn't _The Graduate_. No, I wanted to call it all off quietly. But God hates me, so he gave me a peptic ulcer instead.

"Good God," Dad breathed when the doctor told us. "How in the hell did he get that? He's twenty-six!"

The doctor shrugged. "Stress, probably. Have you been under any duress lately, son?"

I snorted. "You could say that." And Mom scowled at me.

xXx

I am a dumbass fool.

The only other time I've been to the hospital was for a gnarly concussion my sophomore year of college. Maybe this isn't in the best practice, I don't know, but Mom – being a nurse and all – dealt with most stuff at home. It saved us on medical bills, that was for sure. I'm not saying she was the one who set Martha's broken hand or anything like that, but she wasn't gonna run us to the doctor for the small shit. Which I am extremely grateful for, because these hospital sheets itch, and the air smells like the sterile cover-up of death and sickness, and this hospital gown leaves _nothin'_ to the imagination. My dignity is all but gone, and I've made a complete mess of this day. But I gotta give credit to my weak human body – I wasn't taking action, so it did. I owed it a beer.

"Lee?"

I lolled my head over on my pillow and saw my mother standing in the doorway. Truthfully, I was feeling pretty tired, and didn't feel much like talking, but I made this mess – I had to clean it up, ulcer be damned. "Yeah?" I strained to say, my voice cracking just a bit even on just a single word. Mom frowned deeply and sighed.

"There's somebody here to see you," she said gently. "James Williams. Think you could handle it?"

My mind didn't make the connection at first – James Williams? I didn't know any guys by that name. But of course I knew _of_ him. It took me a second, but when it caught up with me, instead of feeling as if I was about to get my ass beat in, I actually felt sort of…relieved. Maybe it was because I didn't want to face Mary or Melissa yet, but I'd take the competition. _Bring it_.

"Sure," I nodded against the pillow. "Yeah, send 'im in."

Mom did. James Williams was wearing a polo shirt and jeans; he had slicked-back red hair and was pretty damn tall – or, at least he looked that way from my perspective. The guy didn't look angry; in fact, he looked sort of awkward, a little embarrassed. That confused me. I wordlessly pointed to the chair on the other side of the room, and he pulled it up beside the bed and sighed. James had an expensive watch on his wrist, and a couple big class rings, and his cellphone poked out of his pocket. These were all hallmarks of a big-time jerk, but I just wasn't getting that vibe from him. He almost looked…familiar.

( _"You married a dude that looks like your old man,"_ I told Mary years later, and even though she'll deny it to the day she dies, she can't run from that particular truth.)

"Nice to meet you," I finally said quietly. "Lee Curtis," I introduced.

"James. James Williams. I'd shake your hand, but – "

"It's okay," I said. "What's up?"

James took a deep breath and studied my face. "I wanted to meet you," he explained, rubbing his hands together. "I realized I came down here to go to the wedding of a guy I didn't even know."

I smirked knowingly. "You didn't do it for me."

He kinda smiled, too. "Yeah, that's true." James laughed. "You have no idea how long it took me to get a date with that girl. I feel like I've been trying to impress her ever since."

I knew exactly what he was talking about. "She's kinda like that."

"Yeah," James drawled, looking down. "But not when it comes to you." He looked up a bit at me. "Man, you don't even have to try. She thinks you hung the damn moon."

Knowing Mary had a thing for the moon, I took that as a compliment. But something about it was bothering me, too, and I frowned, furrowing my brow. "She must think you're somethin', too, man," I told him. "She cares. Mary wouldn't be goin' through with all this if she didn't care about you. Really, I mean that."

At that, he sighed and sat back in the chair, resting his hands on his thighs. James just shook his head. "I guess," he mumbled. "She works in the pediatric ward right now. Did you know that?" I nodded, thinking I remembered her mentioning it once or twice. "She loves kids. She's doing this for our kid more than anything." _More than for me_ was the unspoken bit.

Maybe that was true. I couldn't say, and figured it wasn't my place to speculate. But I knew what I could say, and dammit – it was time to say it. "I'm sorry, James," I said. "I really am. I've been a grade-A asshole, and…and she and I shoulda worked through our baggage a long time ago before we dragged anybody else into this."

James nodded. "It does kinda feel like the two of you are baiting each other. Like me and the woman you're with are just showpieces to get the others' attention. I used to do shit like that to girls in high school, work my way up the ladder, ya know? I didn't know how shitty a thing that was to do until I realized it was happening to me."

I'd never thought of it that way before, that maybe that was what we were doing. Clearly, though, it had all gone a bit too far. "Well, I'm done with that," I proclaimed. Really, I was over it, over the way I'd been behaving. I was too old for these stupid games, and so was she. We'd hurt people. _I'd_ hurt people. Like James, I thought I'd left this act behind in high school. I guess I hadn't. "Melissa and I…besides us obviously not gettin' married today, it ain't happenin' ever. She's a good woman, and she deserves a better man than me."

"It's a start," James agreed.

"And…you and Mary are gonna…." I stopped. I wasn't about to tell him what to do. "Well, you'll figure it out. But I'm not gonna stand in the way. All I can do is take care of what I gotta take care of."

"Thanks," James whispered. "She'll be here soon."

I hated that my heart sped up when I learned that.

xXx

"So."

"So."

Mary tilted her head to the side. She had her arms crossed over her chest in defiance, but that's not what the smirk on her face said. "Guess there ain't gonna be a wedding today."

"Guess there ain't."

She sighed and perched herself at the foot of my bed. Then she just shook her head. "All that trouble for nothing."

"Not for nothing. James really loves you."

"I know," she whispered. "He's right. I'd never thought about it before, but he's right."

"About us baiting each other?"

"Yeah."

"He is," I agreed. "I feel like a heel."

"So do I – you're not alone in that."

This felt like the first time I was really seeing her in a long time. We were never going to catch up to each other, and we should stop trying. Realizing that seemed to lift a burden. I wasn't ever going to stop loving her – but I had to stop trying to force a square peg into a round hole. I couldn't make something happen that wasn't supposed to happen, and neither could she. Mary sighed and squeezed my foot through the blankets. Then, as if she'd come to the same realization that I had, she leaned over and kissed my forehead – that was all. Maybe she lingered, maybe she didn't, but when she pulled away, she put a hand to my cheek, lightly rubbing with the pad of her thumb. I would've stayed there forever with her, but I knew better than to ask her to stay. We were past that. _I_ was past that.

"Don't be a stranger, Lee Curtis."

And then she walked away.

xXx

When Melissa showed up, she had her hair and makeup all done. She had been just about to get into her dress when she got the call. I felt rotten looking at her. Mom and Dad had situated themselves on either side of me, Martha and Joan were sitting on the couch under the window, all four of them acting like sentries as I faced off against my soon-to-be ex-fiancé and my former in-laws-to-be. It wasn't really much of a face-off, but I did appreciate the support.

At first, everyone thought the problem was just the ulcer. That we could either reschedule when I was better, or – and wasn't this romantic – just get married today, get all the legal stuff done, and then have a big ceremony some other time. The MacDonalds thought either option was absolutely spectacular, and were behind us no matter what Melissa and I chose. That's when I exchanged looks with the members of my family, my sisters looking about ready to burst, my mother giving me one of those motherly looks, and the Old Man drilling into my skull with the intensity of his stare. It was time to come clean.

That was not the easiest of days.

"Melissa," I began, my voice shaking. Why had girls in high school ever thought I was some sort of Lothario? I was a fucking idiot when it came to women. Seemed all I was good at doing was breaking their hearts. "There's not going to be a wedding. Not today. Not ever. And there never should have been."

xXx

"Was any of it, ya know…real?"

It was time for _that_ question. Melissa and I were alone; she was about to leave with her family. I told her she could keep the apartment, and Martha and Joanie had gone over to start packing the place up. It felt like the least I could do. It was easy enough to find a place, and right now, I kind of didn't care where I ended up. I started to say yes, that of _course_ parts of it had been real, but that wasn't the whole truth. It was true that I thought she was a great gal, but that's about all I could say for her after a year. That wasn't love.

"It was…something," I said lamely.

"I wish you'd been honest with me. We both could have been happier."

I sighed and nodded. "You're right. You know, I thought…you're a nice girl. And even though it was all a big misunderstanding, you were so happy, and…and so was my mom."

Melissa closed her eyes and sighed through her nose. "Maybe you should talk to her about that."

"Maybe I should. I'm so sorry, Mel."

"I know," she nodded. "Everybody is." Melissa stood up and gave me one last tight smile. "You shouldn't have misled me. I thought you were asking me to marry you, and you let me believe it. And now we have this mess." I had nothing to say to that. "Goodbye, Lee."

That was the last time I ever saw her.

xXx

Mom fenagled her way into convincing the on-duty staff to let her and Dad stay with me overnight, and it probably helped that she knew just about everybody working in that hospital. Besides James, Mary, and the MacDonalds, I hadn't had to deal with any other visitors, which I was fine with. You can probably imagine I was sort of wrung out – it was all my own fault, sure, but I was worn out all the same. And, ya know, I'd been internally bleeding just that morning, so that was bound to lay me out. Docs said they wanted to keep me overnight for observation, but that I could probably go home tomorrow with a bunch of medications that I couldn't pronounce the names of that would stop my stomach from trying to eat itself. Woo- _hoo_.

By the time Mom had sorted everything out with the hospital staff and made arrangements for her and Dad to stay, and she had looked over all the notes they had taken on me for the millionth time, Dad had already fallen asleep in the chair next to my bed, his copy of _The Once and Future King_ laying open in his lap. He'd always liked the Arthur legends. Dad had barely spoken to me that day, and I didn't blame him for not wanting to talk to me, but he had stayed through all of it. Dad could be flaming mad at you, but if he cared, he stuck by your side; I guess he cared. Sometimes, I wished he wouldn't, I'd been such a rotten son. I couldn't reconcile who I'd been lately with who my parents had raised me to be, and I wouldn't blame them for being absolutely ashamed of me, only staying with me out of a sense of responsibility. I really wouldn't.

"Alright," Mom sighed, running her hands through her hair. She'd gone home at some point, Dad, too, to change out of their wedding duds and into regular clothes. She looked exhausted, and then she just crawled into bed with me. I scooted over to give her some room. I thought about what Melissa had said earlier about how I should talk to her about the role I'd forced onto her in all of this. This felt like the only time I could get up the nerve to do it, to ask the one question all of us had been dreading asking for a year.

"Mom?"

"Mm. Yeah, baby."

"I'm sorry."

"We know. We'll keep talking about this. Just rest for now."

But I couldn't let anything rest right now. I had to clear the air; it was going to drive me nuts if I didn't. "Mom, we need to talk."

She cracked her eyes open and sighed, lifting her head a bit to see if Dad was still asleep, which he was. Mom just shook her head at him then propped herself up a bit so she could look at me. "Alright, Lee. What's on your mind?"

I took a deep breath. "Dad already knows this…" I began, "…but, uh, part of the reason I didn't call all this off when I should have is because of how you reacted when you heard the news." Mom narrowed her brow. "Meaning that after everything that happened last year…we'd all been so worried, and when you heard I was getting married, you seemed really…really happy." I pursed my lips. My eyes stung. _God_. I was the worst person on the planet. I was about to lay a huge chunk of this on my own _mother_. "And I wanted you to stay happy. I didn't…." I shook my head, not knowing how to finish that sentence.

"Oh, Lee…."

"Because I thought, if maybe you did what you did on purpose, maybe this would stop you from ever trying again."

Mom sat up straight and looked at Dad again, making sure he was still asleep, like she didn't approve of him hearing this conversation. She sighed and shook her head. "Lee, that's a helluva thing. Honey, what makes _me_ happy is what makes _you_ happy. You didn't have to spin this web to do that. And you didn't have to hide Mary from me – from any of us. If you had wanted to marry her, if you really loved her, how could that possibly have made me upset? It may be too late now, but I want you to know that. Lee, honey, you didn't have to go to these lengths. I never needed to be a part of this equation. I did what I did, and that's _my_ baggage _._ "

I was about to say something else entirely before that last bit caught up with me. I gawked at my mother and slowly sat up. Mom looked down at her lap. "You did it on purpose?" I whispered. "You tried to kill yourself on purpose?"

Mom pursed her lips. "I got a call that Lida – my nanny, you remember her?" I nodded. Lida was a six-foot-tall black woman who worked for my grandparents. Just about the nicest lady you'd ever meet, a little bitter towards her bosses. Not my mom and her big brother, though, but that might have been because she had essentially raised them. You know how that sort of story goes, and it ain't all sunshine and lollipops. Lida had always been real nice to me and my sisters when she saw us, though, probably because we were Jacqueline's children, and she made us her famous pound cake and gave us thick slabs when we visited. She also did up the best mac and cheese in the country, swear to God. But that's all I really knew about her, which was a shame because she'd meant a lot to my mother. And, you know, she was her own person and all, and I'd never really gotten to know her beyond that. "I got a call from your grandmother. She'd passed away, already been buried and everything. It was almost like Bud and I got told as an afterthought. Like our mother could prevent us from mourning her because she was…jealous or something, I don't know, it just…." She shrugged. "It just really fucked me up, I guess." My eyes widened a bit at her language. Mom looked off into the distance and shook her head. "That woman raised me, and my mother had the audacity to act as if it was nothing. It just took me to a really dark place. Then around the same time, Dally was down here, and he had that blood sugar incident – he almost died. Everyone was scared shitless, and the thought of one of us losin' one'a our babies…it was just a lot. I couldn't sleep with all of it; it was worse than usual. I just felt so tired that one night…it didn't even really strike me as suicide. I just wanted to sleep. That's all. But it was no accident." Mom smeared a hand down her still done-up face and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. "I'm not ready to tell your father yet. Or your sisters, or anybody."

"You should," I told her, surprisingly calm. "If I've learned anything today – or the past few months, really – it's that maybe we shouldn't keep things to ourselves."

Mom shook her head. "Probably not. I felt so _stupid_ afterwards," she admitted, sounding extremely bitter. "I kept it all to myself, and I almost died for it."

"Ditto," I joked lightly, nudging her shoulder, and I swear I saw her hide a smile.

"That's not funny," she tried, but she _was_ smiling a bit. "Lee, you know you screwed up, right?" I nodded; I really did know. I'd never _meant_ to hurt anybody, but that's what happened anyways. I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to atone for the last few months, and for some reason, I was okay with that. It felt like penance, like the good half-assed Catholic I had been raised to be. "Good. I still love you, though."

"I love you, too," I whispered. "Don't ever try to leave us again. Dad wouldn't be able to handle it."

Mom looked over at him one last time, his chin drooping to his chest. She reached up and pulled my head to lay on her chest. "I know," she sighed. "Let's be better from here on out, okay?"

I didn't tell her she didn't have to apologize for trying to kill herself, didn't have to try to be better. Looking back, I wish I had. My mother is better than all of us and shouldn't have to apologize for a thing.

xXx

I woke up to the sound of laughter.

I was back at my parents' house a couple nights later, in my old bedroom, opening my eyes to see the old popcorn ceiling and bookshelves full of trophies and pictures of me and my buddies, me and my sisters, my family. Even my desk looked ready for seventeen-year-old Lee to come in and dump his shit there, ready to deal with it later; guess that had always been my modus operandi.

It wasn't unusual to be woken up by the sound of guests in this house. Mom and Dad were always having people over, sometimes late at night. When my sisters and I were little, they'd send us to bed early and have their parties, staying up late drinking and eating crudités, gossiping back and forth with Dad's business partners, or neighborhood parents, or their closest of friends. I'd tiptoed out in my pajamas rubbing my eyes more than once, demanding to be a part of the action before I'd just end up falling asleep at Dad's feet as he played a hand of cards (euchre with his and mom's couple friends, poker with his business partners, and absolutely cutthroat Oklahoma Poker with his buddies, who threatened to either turn it into a game of strip poker or Russian roulette nearly every time, they were such bad cheats). That, or Mom and Dad would give me and Martha and Joan sweet cherries from the wet bar and meatballs on decorative toothpicks with big glasses of milk for our dinner. And you could ask Mary, Dallas, Lisa, Annette, Vinny, Tommy, Francine, Johnny, and Michael what their parents' dinner parties were like, and they'd probably have similar stories. A Mathews dinner party always included live music; a dinner party with the Randles usually ended with a joint getting passed around; something always got broken when dinner was at Uncle Soda's; and Uncle Pony and Aunt Rose's dinner parties were erudite and teeming with academics. But all of them had the common denominators of booze, good food, more booze, and plenty of gossip and reminiscing.

Tonight didn't seem to be any exception.

I had pretty much slept the day away, which I guess was what I was supposed to be doing, but now I was hungry, and you should never deny a Curtis man food, unless you want to risk losing a limb. I stumbled out to the main part of the house and found the Moms in the kitchen and the Dads in the dining room, plates pushed aside in favor of – you guessed it – drinks and cards. It was a pretty lively scene, considering what had been going on this past week, and I wasn't exactly dressed for a dinner party, but again, my monkey brain was in search of sustenance. Also, I'd just assumed they'd all gone home, skipped town, since there was no wedding to go to. I know that James Williams and Two-Bit and Pony's kids had all flown back home, and I thought their parents had gone with. Guess not. Guess that meant I wasn't going to be able to avoid anybody, either.

"Oh, Lee, you're awake!" Mom grinned, leaving her friends to kiss my cheek.

"Doesn't he look better," Aunt Bee mused, giving me a once-over, and Aunt Evie and Aunt Rose both nodded.

"Gave us quite the scare, pal," Evie said.

"You hungry?" Rose asked, already grabbing a plate down from the cabinet for me, like she'd read my mind.

I was honestly getting more confused by the second by the warm reception, but then again, the Dads hadn't seen me yet, so this was probably just a moment of respite before I got my ass handed to me. I felt myself nod, though, and Mom steered me out to the dining room and into a chair before leaving for the kitchen. The card game stopped so that I had all five sets of eyes at that table on me, and if I'd had any energy, I probably would have been squirming. Instead, I just blinked owlishly.

"Alright," I mumbled. "Out with it. Give me your worst. Tear me a new asshole." I held my arms out to the side, daring them. "I've more than earned it."

There was only more silence as they all exchanged little looks, raised eyebrows, wordless shrugs. But all anyone said was Soda asking, "How ya feelin'?"

I blinked again, stunned. "Uh. Fine. Hungry." I hadn't eaten yet, but I got the feeling Mom was strategically waiting to feed me until whatever this was got worked through.

Steve shook his head. "How can that be possible? You've got a fuckin' hole in yer stomach."

I shrugged helplessly. "Man, I don't know," I said, feeling how much talking still wore me out. I think I've been tired this whole damn year, but to be fair, I brought most of that on myself, so. Yeah. "How is it that any of you still have livers?"

That got them to laugh – touché – but if I'm being honest, I was near tears from how confused I was. Shouldn't they be yelling at me? I almost _wanted_ them to chew me out because at least that would feel normal, but I guess I couldn't get cut even a little slack; the universe seemed to want to keep me in suspense for as long as it possibly could. Damned universe, with its goddamned karma.

"You wanna get chewed out?" Two-Bit drawled, voice relaxed. They'd returned to their card game, and he looked up from his hand to watch me with steely eyes and a sloe grin. I stammered.

"Uh. Maybe?"

They all laughed again. "Well, then you're shit outta luck tonight, kid," he said. "See, here's the way we're lookin' at it – we figger that givin' yerself an ulcer is a pretty good place to start your penance. And, also, that you're not the only idiot involved in this situation. Sure, you dug yourself into a pretty deep hole, didn't reach out to anybody for help – which was damned stupid – but it's not like my dumbass kid is completely innocent either."

"Basically, it takes two to tango," Ponyboy summed up concisely, then frowned at his cards.

"What we're sayin' is," Dad said, getting us back on track to wrap this up, "you may be a moron, but you're not the only moron involved, and if I know you – which I do – you're goin' to be beatin' yerself up over this for the rest of your life."

"As you should," Two-Bit interjected sweetly. Dad tipped his finger at him in concession.

"This is gonna take time," Dad went on. "But life's not gonna stop. You're gonna fix that hole in your stomach, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and face the music like a man. You played a girl. Two of 'em. It was shitty of you, but that don't mean we're gonna throw you out on your ass. You ain't the Devil. You're a dumbass kid."

"I'm twenty-six," I lamely argued, and they all rolled their eyes. God, how could they be so in-synch.

"That don't mean shit," Soda said good-naturedly, with a smile on his face. "You're a kid, and more importantly, you're one'a ours. And one'a the things you learn in this family is that you don't run from your problems."

"That's right," Steve agreed. "You write exposés about them." Ponyboy reached across the table to slug him in the shoulder, but it was all in jest.

"You ran, kid," Two-Bit continued, his voice stern. It was rare to hear him anywhere near the ballpark of serious, but I had really gotten it from him the past week. "What the hell was it you were so afraid of?"

I wasn't going to rat my mom out when she'd asked me not to. I also wasn't quite ready to admit that I didn't have the guts to just go to Mary and tell her how I felt _years_ ago because I was afraid that time and distance had prevented her from feeling the same. (How does that song go? The Macca one? ' _Guess you never knew, Dear Boy, what you had found….')_ But, there was one thing I could tell them right now, and I figured, hey – it's a step. "You," I said simply, staring the man down. And that was the honest truth. He cocked an eyebrow.

"Me?" Two-Bit repeated. "The hell's so scary about me?"

"Uh…" I rubbed the back of my neck, thinking of how to put this delicately. "Well, considerin' the, uh, tongue-lashing you gave me the first time I even _kissed_ your daughter – "

Two-Bit threw down his cards dramatically and held up his hands. "Are you _kiddin' me?_ You were neckin' in the goddamn _Sunday school room!"_

"Shit, that's right," Ponyboy snickered, clapping his hands together because like I said all that time ago – the story _is_ pretty damned funny.

"I kinda thought..." I shrugged. "I thought you wouldn't exactly approve."

Two-Bit lowered his hands and stared at me, his expression hard to read – and he was a pretty easy guy to read. "You really thought that?" He asked, sounding genuinely surprised. I nodded. "Shoot, kid. You been holdin' onto that for ten years?" Two-Bit shook his head in astonishment. "Lee, kiddo, trust me – I was an ass that day, and I didn't think it would work out with you bein' so young and all, but if I knew how you'd really felt about her, I wouldn't'a cared." He shrugged, suddenly looking a bit down. "I just want her to be happy, ya know? That's what we want for all y'all. And _now_ ," he rolled his eyes, switching gears because god knows he couldn't let himself get too emotional in front of everybody, "my in-laws are gonna be a coupl'a east coast Kennedy-wannabes instead of your old man, who's already stuck with me for life."

"Oh, god!" Soda interjected with sudden realization. "You're gonna have to share your grandkid with some _goddamned politician._ "

" _I know_ ," Two-Bit said darkly.

"You're gonna see him on C-SPAN introducing some children's healthcare initiative, and he's gonna be throwin' ' _his_ grandchild' in everyone's faces to make him look more relatable, and you're gonna have to sit with the fact that he's usin' _your_ grandbaby for political gain." Ponyboy shook his head. "We live in a cruel world, indeed."

"We sure do," Dad agreed, glancing at me.

Two-Bit snorted and shook his head with a smirk. "Yeah, well," he shrugged. "At least we'll know whose fault it is."

"Mine," I agreed with a nod, and it felt good to sort of be in on the joke when we all started laughing. I wasn't out of the woods yet, I knew that, but I was starting to feel a bit that I could maybe be redeemed for what I'd done. With time. That must have been the cue to the kitchen because all four of them came out, Mom setting a plate with grilled cheese and tomato soup in front of me, a classic from when we were kids and had stayed home sick from school. It kinda made me feel like, well, a kid, but I was too tired to mind all that much. Mom sat down between me and Dad, and he grabbed her hand, and she rubbed my shoulder with her free one.

"What's all this talk about children's healthcare initiatives?" Bee asked. Two-Bit patted his leg and she sat on his lap, probably because he knew the attention was about to shift completely onto them, which I was grateful for. Also, the Moms had definitely overheard our entire conversation – they just liked to pretend as if they didn't. They were always doing that.

"We were talkin' 'bout how Senator Williams is gonna use your grandbaby as a political pawn," Pony said, and Bridget just stared at him.

"By the way…." Soda raised his glass and looked at Bee and Two-Bit, who looked ready for whatever was about to come out of my uncle's mouth. "I think congratulations are in order!"

"Jesus, Sodapop," Steve shook his head.

"No, he's right!" Evie said, raising her glass in toast, too, which meant Steve followed suit, and one by one, everyone raised their glasses. "This has been a helluva week for everybody, but some good _can_ come of this. So – to Bee and Two-Bit," she grinned. "The youngest-lookin', sexiest grandparents on the east coast!"

We all cheered for them, and they looked at each other, cocked eyebrows and all. "Just the east coast?" Bridget asked, and Evie took a cool sip of her drink.

"Well, Stevie and I'll give you two a run for yer money in a few years," she explained, and that set them all off again.

"Then I think we should also raise a toast to our boy here," Steve said, nodding her head towards me. "You're not really a part of this family until you fuck somethin' up on an absolutely _cosmic_ scale, so – congrats, kid. You're officially as stupid as the rest of us." I blushed as they all started hollering and clinking glasses and drinking at my expense.

"She's such a moron," Two-Bit shook his head, pivoting back to Mary, running the pads of his fingers across his eye and smearing them down his face. "I'm fifty-two, and I don't look a day over eighteen. I can't be a grandfather."

"Huh," Bridget crossed her arms, pretending to be deep in thought. "Think you said something similar about…twenty-five years ago, when I told you that you were gonna be a father."

"All men are like that," Mom shrugged. She jerked a thumb at me. "This one right here has 'accident' written all over 'im."

" _Jesus_ , Mom," I laughed, smearing my hands down my face.

"Oh, honey, she said _accident_ , not _mistake,"_ Rose rushed in. "Those are _very_ different!"

"Lisa was the only one we planned for," Two-Bit added. We had wandered firmly into nostalgia territory. See? It always ended up here. "That's why she's the normal one."

"Dear God, Keith…."

"See, Steve and I had it all planned out," Evie said. "No surprises."

"Oh, _nuh-uh_ ," Soda sneered. "You got that bonus baby! Planned for two, got three."

"Do y'all talk about anything else besides us?" I asked, throwing my hat into the ring. They all stared at me.

"No," Dad finally said. "Because what the hell else is as interestin' as you?"

xXx

When the night ended, and everybody was saying their goodbyes, Bee and Two-Bit stopped me in the hallway, but nobody seemed to be able to say anything at first. My heart was pounding a mile a minute; nobody else was watching us, they were too busy grabbing their coats and wrapping up their conversations, but it felt like the three of us were standing in an arena of a million people.

I spoke up first. "I'm sorry," I whispered. I was going to be saying that a lot, but that was a part of it. I had to suck the venom out, but the kicker was that I was the snake, too.

"We know," Bridget assured me. It wasn't like when Melissa had said it, rightfully angry. Aunt Bee was being gentle with me, and I was grateful to her for it, especially since I didn't deserve it. "I just wish…." She trailed off, staring at the ground. Two-Bit watched her with a sad expression, and I did, too, waiting. She never got angry with any of us when we were kids; she didn't have any of Evie's fight, or Rose's starch, or Mom's no-nonsense. I'd repaid her good humor by breaking her daughter's heart. She finally looked back up at me with a sad smile and shiny eyes. "I hope things can get better between the two of you someday," she finally said softly. Then she hugged me, and I hugged her back. I didn't know what to say; just squeezed as hard as I could and then let her go.

I didn't expect Two-Bit to be so kind. He watched his wife go, then turned back on me, looking a little bit hurt, too. I held my breath, waiting for him to drop the act now that it was just the two of us, ready to face the music like a man, just like Dad had said to. But then Two-Bit just gave me a watery smile and held my face in his hands, something I'd seen him do countless times with his own kids, and my breath caught. I waited for him to say something, and he did start to, but then he stopped himself and settled for patting my cheek a couple times. For once, Two-Bit Mathews was out of words.

xXx

"You okay?"

The sight of my father leaning in my doorway at the end of a long day was comfortingly familiar. "Maybe," I said softly. I saw his silhouette nod.

"You will be, anyways," he said, his voice kind. "Things have a way of workin' out, ya know. Even if it's not in the way you expect."

"You're always sayin' that," I sighed, "but it don't feel that way."

"That's because you fucked up and you're feelin' like a jackass. 'Course things look bleak right now. Give it time."

"Two-Bit and Bee hate me," I said.

"No they don't," Dad shook his head. "Trust me, I know when Two-Bit Mathews hates somebody, and he don't hate you. And for the record, nobody else does either. I'd even go so far as to say that Mary don't hate you. You both need time and space – for the first time, that's actually gonna be good for the two of you. And one day, maybe you'll be able to look at your lives and be able to say that things are okay. We'll help you."

"I fuckin' played myself."

"You sure did. We do that sometimes."

I didn't have anything else to say to that. Now I was out of words, too.

xXx

That's why I'm gonna let Mary tell you how this ends.

XXXXX

 **AN: One more to go, pals.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	10. Be Be Your Love

**Author's Note: What's this? Time skips? _With no time stamps?_ That's right! We are going buck-wild because it is the last chapter, babey!**

 **Happy reading :)**

XXXXX

 _I woke up because I felt the moon caressing my window._

 _For someone who, really, could not claim to be Catholic, I sure do get a lot of visits from the Madonna. My second mother, I considered her, in a way. Bridget is my earthly mother, whom I love through it all, but the Virgin seemed to sometimes sense in me stirrings that no mortal being, not even the woman who carried me, could detect, and she did not keep those stirrings secret from me._

 _I had made Mother Mary very personal to me, gave her a meaning no church could touch, or even understand._

 _It was a crescent moon – should it have been? Would astronomers speak of an anomaly in the morning? I didn't know, couldn't know. But I went to the window, unsure if I was awake or still dreaming, and I listened. This wouldn't make a believer of me, but the Virgin Mother did tell me something that somehow, I already knew was coming._

xXx

"Listen to me," my mother had said, grabbing my hands in hers. "If you're feeling scared – good. You should be. That's the right response. I've been scared shitless since the day you were born, and every single day since. It doesn't get any easier, no matter how many children you have."

I squirmed a bit on the bed, feeling as if my mother was actively _trying_ to make me doubt myself. "Gee, Mom, thanks."

She sighed. "I'm not saying that to make you doubt yourself." God – it's like she could read my mind. "I just…I want you to know you're not alone if you're feeling like you can't do this. You can, okay? Trust me, I've seen you do some pretty crazy things. If nothing else, you've got us, okay?"

"Thanks, Mom," I whispered.

I had sort of been hiding out at my parents' house since I got put on bedrest. If I couldn't work, I didn't see much point in hanging around my empty apartment, and now that Dallas was back up at Syracuse working on his post-grad, and Lisa still at school, too, Mom and Dad's empty nest syndrome was just bad enough to let me crash with them. Actually, it was kinda more like Dad called and said he was driving down to DC to come get me because _if that dumbass who's claimin' to be the father of my grandchild ain't gonna be around, then me and your Mama will be_.

The past few months had been…complicated.

"How's she doin'?"

I scowled in the general direction of my father's voice. "I'm right here, ya know. You could ask me."

Dad sheepishly smiled and rubbed the back of his neck. "Fine, then – how ya doin', sweet pea?"

I groaned as another wave of discomfort washed over me, roiling through my body. "Does that answer your question?" I grunted, and Dad just pressed his mouth into a thin line and nodded once, then shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Keith," my mother began gently, "have you called Dally and Lisa yet?"

Dad brightened and snapped his fingers. "No! No, you're absolutely right, honey – I completely blanked on that! So, I'm…I'm gonna go…call them…right…now," he said, backing out of the room and thumbing over his shoulder at the hall. I swear as soon as he was out of our sight he started sprinting for a phone. My mother and I exchanged wry looks; guess this was all a little much for him.

"He's still new to this," she patiently explained. "When Lisa started crowning, he apparently looked so rough the nurse made him sit down. Try to be patient with him." Man could go to war, get stabbed and shot at, roughed up in gang fights, have beer bottles broken over his own head, stitch himself up, but childbirth was just too much for him. Alright, then. "Do you need anything? Some ice, maybe?"

"Drugs," I moaned. "I want drugs."

"You're not dilated enough yet." Mom's calm was starting to get on my nerves, even though I appreciated it like crazy at the same time. "Stay with me."

I stayed with her; I focused all of my energy on my mom. She had pulled her hair back in a clip – she'd done that right after she'd tied my hair up out of my face, with the same gentle hands she'd used to braid my hair before school almost every day of the sixth grade. She'd rolled up the sleeves of her stylish maroon sweater past her elbows. When I came into her bedroom that morning, Dad still asleep while she was getting dressed, she'd already done her makeup, and was practically ready to roll out the door when I'd told her it was time, like she'd been anticipating this happening today (Dad hadn't been so lucky; when Mom woke him up to fill him in on the situation, his scream of _" **FUCK!** " _could be heard all the way down in the kitchen.) Mom had even reapplied her lipstick after I had gotten settled, but none of it came across as vanity; it felt like she was trying to keep everything as normal and calm as she could for me.

Bridget Mathews was ready to be a grandma. Even if Dad was still struggling with the concept.

xXx

Hell, _I_ was still struggling with the concept.

xXx

"It's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's the _miracle of life!"_

I was going to kill my baby sister.

Why in the hell did I think having her help was a good idea? Lisa was way too perky. She kept trying to lighten the mood and _encourage_ me and…well, I guess that's exactly why I wanted her in here with me in the first place alongside our mom. Dad and Dallas were hovering right outside the room, probably pacing back and forth, swearing, and very nearly pulling their hair out – they both had the same tells and tics when they were stressed out. Having them in here would have been a massive mistake. It was just me, the nurse, and Mom and Lisa on either side, both of them holding on. Lisa kept on taking peeks and squealing whenever any sort of progress was made – when that baby started crowning, I'm pretty sure she broke the sound barrier, and her enthusiasm didn't waver even at the nurse's reprimand.

Mom, however, focused on me the whole time, and I stuck with her, just like she'd said to. As far as I was concerned right now, she was my partner in this.

xXx

That's why I named him what I did.

xXx

" _Paul?"_ Daddy repeated. He looked down at his new grandson. "The hell she get Paul from, kid?"

Mom and I exchanged knowing, pleased-as-punch smiles. Without taking my eyes off her, I told him, "Well, Paul's the cute one, ya know. Seemed fitting."

Lisa was already in on it, so she just sat back on the couch next to our brother with her arms crossed smugly across her chest, but it took Dad and Dally a minute of staring off into space with brows cocked in confusion to finally get it, and even then, Dad got it about a half second before Dally did, shooting my mother a Look. "You're _kiddin'_. You cannot fuckin' be serious!"

"Woah, woah, woah, Old Man" – Dallas jutted his chin at my baby – "little pitchers."

"It's a very biblical name," Mom tried explaining away, but by the little grin still playing on her face, she was just fucking with Dad, who obviously wasn't having it as he shook his head.

"Oh, nuh-uh. Don't go pretendin' you named this baby after anybody in the Bible because that is _bullshit_." Mom stuck out her bottom lip and shrugged. "It's been thirty years, woman. Beatlemania is over."

"Not in my heart!" Mom opined.

"You've corrupted our daughter. _How could you_."

"Hey, it was my choice," I stepped in. "Mom was a real big help. I owed her one." More than one, really. I'd be paying back my mother for the rest of forever, Dad, too, and I was okay with that. I figured the least I could do right now was name her grandson after her high school dream crush. What mother wouldn't want that?

xXx

Also, Paul just sorta sounded right. Shoot me.

xXx

"You say the word, and I'll throw that blowhard out on his ass, Mare."

Paul was sleeping in my arms, and I sighed and looked up from his sweet face into the face of my sweet, heart-of-gold, dumbass little brother. He was drinking apple juice out of a straw. I nodded at the plastic Welch's bottle, completely ignoring his offer for the time being. "Where'd you get that?"

Dallas held up his other arm and showed off the medical band on his wrist. "Chronic illness has its perks," he explained. "Don't pretend you didn't hear me, Mary."

I pursed my lips. It must have meant _something_ that James had come to see me, to see our child, but _I_ wasn't ready to see him yet. "Tell him not today," I decided. Dally gave me the thumbs-up.

xXx

The first time I let James see his son, Paul was two weeks old, and my parents were not-so-subtly listening in from the kitchen as the three of us sat in the front room, James looking incredibly out of place. He kept rubbing his palms against the legs of his pants, his eyes darting around. My parents' house was probably a sight different from the homes he'd grown up in. The walls were covered in pictures, there was baby grand – which really isn't quite as small as the name leads you to believe – and the build of the old house meant that rooms were pretty tight in places. There was a crucifix from my grandmother that Dad had hung up just for kicks, hidden Grateful Dead bears, incense, stacks of sheet music, and the latest housecat, the aptly-named Lilith, was perched on the chair next to mine, staring James down like it was her personal mission in life to protect my son and I from him.

"He's good?" James asked.

I nodded. "He's good," I confirmed. "Perfect, really. My mother says he cries less than the three of us ever did."

James nodded slowly. "I…I guess that's a good thing."

Yeah. Guess so. "Is this how it's going to be?" I asked, and James looked up at me with guilty eyes.

"Is this how what's going to be?" He asked, clearly confused. I sighed.

"Are you just going to show up whenever you want? Be there for him – us – only when it's convenient? Cuz I gotta say, that sounds like a pretty shit deal to me, if you get to come and go as you please while I get stuck doing this on my own, just so your parents can save face."

That got James to play some defense. "This isn't what I wanted!" He hissed quietly. "And I'm sorry about all of this, but did you ever consider that maybe I _also_ came over here with some good news?"

"Oh, yeah?" I asked sarcastically. "That your parents are at least forcing you to pay child support?"

He gave me a peevish look. "Mary. Listen. I know it didn't exactly go over well with my parents. They didn't understand at the time how I feel about you, that I was serious about you."

"They thought I was a hooker," I said matter-of-factly.

"No they didn't!" He insisted. "Jesus, Mary, I swear they didn't. They just…."

"Thought I was a whore. Just not in the literal sense," I snarked, smiling all the way. This conversation clearly wasn't going where James thought it was going to when it began. "So what's different now? How serious _are_ we, anyways? Are you saying you're ready for the big commit? That your parents are totally cool with you marrying the girl you were casually dating and then knocked up? Not sure I buy it."

"Not sure you have to," he whispered. "They don't know I'm here."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

James nodded. "Yeah. I was a goner the first time I saw you, Mary. Believe me when I say that I wanted to do right by you – I wasn't the one who wanted to sweep this under the rug. But now…I've run away from this – from the two of you – for long enough."

Suddenly, my conviction was starting to slip away. I held tighter to my son, who squirmed and whined at the unwanted movement. I really suck at this romance thing, don't I? Because I had the feeling I was about to disappoint…well, if not myself, then _some_ body. "I'd say you have," I agreed, trying really hard to not fall victim to his repentance.

"I just keep thinking to myself…maybe she'll give me another shot," he went on. "Maybe we can do things a little…unconventionally."

I blinked. "Unconventionally?" I repeated. James nodded. "You mean, you want to marry the woman you were casually dating, who you got pregnant, who admitted to being in love with another man even when she was dating you? And you're going to go behind your parents' backs to do it?"

"Well, when you put it like _that_ …."

James pouted his lip and shrugged. I looked down at the squirming baby in my arms, willing it to tell me what to do. Give me a sign. Actually, like always, I think I turned to my personalized version of Mother Mary to give me guidance, while at the same time wishing my own mother and father would just come in here and tell me what to do. Listening to this conversation must have been killing them, and I had a bad feeling I was about to make them very, very disappointed. But it felt worth the risk. I had more than just myself to think about now. So I looked James right in the eye and said,

"You know what? What the hell. Let's do it."

xXx

Oh, you want to hear about _Lee!_

Okay. Yeah. Sure. I'll talk about Lee.

xXx

 _"You comin' or not, Mary?" Lee called. "We ain't got all night! If you wanna do this, we gotta do it now."_

 _I took a deep breath. "I'm coming!" I yelled up. I started making my way up the ladder, being careful of my footing so I didn't fall. I didn't have an aversion to heights, but falling from the ladder of the water tower didn't exactly sound too appealing. Mom and Dad would have been pissed if I'd died._

 _Once I got to the top, Lee gestured for me to come stand next to him, and we looked out at the expanse of city that was Tulsa below us. It wasn't New York City, and the view wasn't quite exactly like the one from the Empire State Building, but it still managed to take my breath away._

 _"Wow," I breathed. Lee laughed._

 _"Wow is right, ain't it? I know it ain't Manhattan, but it could be a helluva lot worse."_

 _"Touché," I said, still looking out at the lights of Tulsa. No high rises, not really, not in the way I knew them, but plenty of activity._

 _"Yeah," he breathed. "I figger our parents might not be too happy 'bout us bein' up here. I don't exactly sneak out of the house too often…." Lee drawled sheepishly._

 _"Me neither," I mumbled._

 _Then it hit me; adrenaline had officially worn off. Once Mom and Daddy figured out I'd snuck out of the house, which of course they would, they would have my head. Dad would probably really want to rip me a new one, considering the terms we'd been on lately. God, I can be an idiot sometimes. I watched Lee as he stared out at the city, and then as he smiled real big. He pointed out at an area below us._

 _"You can see your grandparents' house from here, ya know," he said, and sure enough, you could. "And any time now, our parents are gonna figure out we're missing, if they haven't already."_

 _"Don't I know it," I said miserably, leaning my chin on the railing, not able to take my eyes off the sight laid out before us. "So, Lee," I started, trying to shift the mood back, "you bring girls up here often?"_

 _His gaze darted over to glance at me all sloe-eyed. "Maybe," he drawled, but my look must have clearly said that I wasn't buying it because he just sorta laughed and said, "Uh, actually the only other time I've been up here was with my buddies. We tagged the tank after we won our state basketball championship. It's sort of a tradition. Actually, it's right over here." He led me over to the spot where he and his teammates had all written their names and the date of the big game, the final score, and 'WRHS Ropers.'_

 _"Wow, Lee," I said sarcastically. "You're immortalized! One for the ages." I shot him a look. "Ya know, we can quit pretending we came up here for the view."_

 _Lee smiled all slow and cute-like, and I grabbed his face and kissed him._

xXx

Now, it's not like I didn't see Lee at all in the time between his botched wedding and the time Dad died, but….

Well. Death does bring people together.

xXx

"Aw, man, it's good to see you. I'm sorry, Dal, how've you been?"

"I've been better. You?"

"Man, this is the worst."

"Lee Curtis, sweetheart, is that you? Oh, of _course_ it is. C'mere, give me a hug, sweetie."

My heart was pounding in my ears; it hadn't been that long since I'd last seen Lee, had it? He'd come with his youngest sister, Joan, who had Lisa's hands in hers and was making her laugh. We all looked so grown up – when had that happened? Standing up at the front of that funeral home, my father's dead body close behind me, it felt like everything was collapsing in on me, and Lee Curtis was _right there_. But of course he was. He was family. His wife was here, their kids. My husband, our kids. Paul, a teenager now, letting his five-year-old cousin Sam, Dally's son, follow him around like a duckling and pepper him with questions. It had all just _happened_. And even though we'd seen each other plenty in all these years, we hadn't found our way back to each other.

"Hey, Mary."

I felt like all eyes were on me as I looked up into Lee's eyes, those same ones I'd spied looking back at me from the other side of an old Catholic church in Tulsa before we found ourselves kissing in the Sunday school room. It was the memory that I smiled at. "Hey, Lee," I whispered. I reached out and squeezed his hands, his eyes searching mine. Lee shook his head.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"So am I."

xXx

Sometimes it surprised me how grown-up and glamorous Lisa had turned out looking. When Paul was born, she was nineteen, and now all this time had passed, and she was some sort of woman. She always looked put-together and everything about her seemed expensive. I was either the Meg or Jo (probably some sort of mix of the two) to her Amy. Aunt Sadie was around here somewhere, and even after having six kids, she looked great, so I could only imagine how Lisa, Sadie's little doppelganger, would look at the same age.

"How're you holdin' up?" Lisa asked through ruby lips, ballerina's body leaning up against the counter in the kitchen. I snorted softly.

"In reference to what?" I asked.

"Well, we're all miserable about Dad," Lisa shrugged, like it was nothing, "so. Guess that leaves Lee." I scowled at her, and she just grinned. "I see how you look at him still," Lisa teased. "We all do. 'Cept maybe the absent-minded professor," she joked in reference to our brother. "He looks good, doesn't he? Total DILF."

"Oh, back off, Lis," I shook my head, even though I agreed, but then she was looking over my head and she opened her mouth in feigned surprise.

"Well, speak of the devil!"

I whipped around and saw Lee staring at us, confused. "Uh. Hi?"

"Howdy, Lee," Lisa greeted. "It's _so_ good to see you."

Lee blinked. "Yeah, so you said," he deadpanned.

"Well, I've gotta be…somewhere else," Lisa said, and sauntered off, winking at me, and that's when I noticed Joan standing in the doorway, too, and I had to resist rolling my eyes. We had an audience, and they'd probably somehow arranged this little meeting. _Great._

"You'd think they'd maybe, I don't know, grow up a little," Lee said to me, shaking his head. I snorted.

"Nope. They're still a couple of _spoiled brats!_ " I said just loud enough so our sisters could hear me, and I hope that the snickering I heard was just my imagination. Yeah, I'll bet they were getting a kick out of this. Leave it to Lisa to drum up drama at a funeral – our own father's, no less. I sighed and ran a hand through my curls, which in an attempt to tame them had straightened and curled this morning so I wouldn't look like a total spaz, but I had the feeling my hair would be back to its normal, crazy self by the end of the night, if it kept going anything like this. "So, uh. How're you?" I asked, trying to steer us back in the direction of genial, normal conversation.

"I'm…cool," Lee said awkwardly. We hadn't been alone like this in a long, long time. I nodded slowly.

"That's, uh…cool," I said lamely.

"Yeah. Uh. You?"

I looked at him like _are you kidding?_ He seemed to get the message, but I still said, "I've been better. Things were pretty rough."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Lee said sincerely. "That must have…."

"Sucked," I said with a sardonic smile. "It really, really sucked."

It really, really had. What can I say? Cancer's a bitch. I was with Dad the night he died – not there to see it happen, he just went in his sleep, Mom bravely by his side – but just hanging out with him, practically laying on top of him as I let him just sort of run his hand through my hair, feeling his breathing getting shallower and shallower. There had been something sort of peaceful about it, though; we didn't have to say anything. There was nothing to bicker about. Hell, we hardly said a word. You ask me, his last words to me (Besides the simple " _No"_ in response to my question of whether or not I was really and truly the biggest disappointment of his life) was him smirking at me and tugging one of my curls and letting it bounce back into place, something he had done all the time to both me and Mom. I consider that the last thing because then he asked me if I could grab Dallas for him, and I'd be _pissed_ if my father's last words to me were about someone else. But they weren't – I don't consider his request as really being directed to _me_. I just happened to be the person in the room.

"How's your dad?" I asked, and Lee sighed.

"He's…." He shrugged. All of Dad's buddies had come up here to help out, say goodbye, but I felt like I'd barely seen them. Ever since their families got here for the funeral, I hadn't seen them at all. "Well. He's keepin' a straight face, but it's tough on all of 'em," he said. "All our moms, Dad's brothers, everybody. Things just won't be the same without him."

That sort of made me smile for some reason. "Yeah, you're right. He was quite the guy."

"He really was. Larger than life."

I laughed a bit. "I'm sure that was the sort of legacy he was looking to leave."

"Oh, sure," Lee shrugged. "Doesn't hurt that his kids are pretty great, too." He nudged my shoulder. "You, for starters."

Oh, _fuck_.

Before I could stop myself, I hugged him, my arms wound tightly around his neck, hanging onto him like my life depended on it – and maybe in that moment, it did. Lee hugged back, and I hoped to god I hadn't made him feel awkward, that I hadn't crossed some unspoken line with this, but it didn't really feel that way. So I got bold. When I stepped back, I looked up shyly and said,

"Ya know, we can quit pretending we came in here just to make small talk."

He remembered. That smile told me everything. Which meant that the next logical step, as the story dictated, was to kiss him.

xXx

"Hey…."

Dallas was leaning in the doorway. It had been a big night, and he looked exhausted. But, he'd delivered a beautiful, obviously emotionally taxing eulogy for our father, so I could see why. I set down the black dress I'd picked out for the service tomorrow on the bed and went to stand with my brother.

"Hey," I parroted. "What brings ya 'round, pardner?"

That made him smile – it wasn't one of _my_ catchphrases I had just regurgitated. "I may have heard something pretty interesting 'bout you from a couple little birdies."

I didn't even have to ask. "Incriminating, you mean."

Dallas shrugged. "Yeah, maybe." He studied my face. "So, uh. Did it mean anything?"

It meant everything. "Nothing will ever come of it. We're grown up now. We have…responsibilities. And he lives hundreds of miles away. I guess it's for the best."

"But was it…was it nice?" He wondered. I let myself smile.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I guess it was. But…it's over now."

xXx

Pure, utter bullshit.

Nothing's ever just over.

xXx

" _Stake my future on a hell of a past, looks like tomorrow is a-comin' on fast…Ain't complainin' 'bout what I got, seen better times, but who has not?..."_

"'Silvio, silver and gold, find out somethin' only dead men know,'" I sang along poorly, but then again, it's kinda hard to sing along to Dylan no matter how good you are; your heart's gotta be in it, and we were just goofing around. Lee just snorted and shook his head, lacing his fingers through mine, and I squeezed back tight.

My sister had just gotten engaged. Had a big party and everything. The after-party was private, though, and the guest list was very exclusive, only included me, Lee, some Dylan playing off a phone speaker (which wouldn't be the way our parents would have ever deigned to listen to _any_ music, but you make do with what ya got), and a bottle of champagne we'd snaked from the party. Turns out Hyde Park had plenty of hiding spots, so kudos to Lisa for doing well for herself and throwing these high-class soirees. I'd told James I needed some air; Lee said the same to his wife. Maybe they knew what was going on, maybe they didn't, but nobody ever bugged us about what 'getting some air' really meant.

xXx

"How long do you think we can keep this up?"

Christmastime was here again. It always snuck up on me. Our second one without Dad; it was already getting easier. Lee and I had already kept this up for about a year. We were still the same idiots we were back in 2000, '95, '89. There was a certain sort of comfort in that. I couldn't begin to tell you why. I sighed and pressed my head into his chest in frustration. We were hiding out in Soda's linen closet, which was a damned tight fit.

"I don't know," I mumbled. Our entire family was downstairs getting ready for Christmas dinner. My husband was here, my kids. Lee's family. We were hiding in plain sight. I wished my dad was here; he'd always been so easy to hide behind, but that's not fair to him, to want him here just so he could fight my battles. He'd been so much more than that. "Why are you just thinking of this _now?_ "

"Shit if I know." He paused. "Sometimes I just figger we should either come clean or call it quits."

"Yeah," I agreed easily, my voice muffled against his chest. "I know what you mean. If it makes you feel better, I think James has always known he was playing for second."

"Well that's a comfort."

I leaned back against the opposite wall, the light switch dangling between us. I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled wryly. "We don't see each other that often, Lee." It was true; maybe once a year these days. The likelihood I'd see him between now and next Christmas was pretty slim.

"That doesn't make it any better."

"No, it doesn't," I agreed. "What I'm saying is that it'll never get past this. What we have now. At least, I don't think so. Do you?"

Lee sighed. "Probably not." He grinned for real. "But I kinda don't mind the trying."

I knew what he meant. What would happen to us if we didn't have the chase? It was more than just the taboo-ness of it all, of course; I loved this stupid man. But I felt a certain love for my husband, too, just like I knew Lee felt something for his wife, more than what he had for Melissa MacDonald. This wasn't anything anyone but us could understand. Maybe we _were_ that sought-after, elusive soulmate status, but the world wouldn't make any kind of sense if we got married. Not unless we were widowed thirty years down the road, and maybe not even then. But Lee Curtis was my touchstone, my first love, a part of my cosmic equation. That probably – definitely – didn't make any of this right, but maybe I don't wanna be right on this one.

I work a thankless job. I love my children more than I love life itself, and I'm scared shitless for them every day, just like Mom said I should feel. And I stand by my husband when it matters. That's why he and I have wordlessly agreed to this arrangement. What? We're not all built for monogamy. James has always known the score.

"You'll always have me, Lee," I reminded him.

"I know," he whispered, then leaned down to kiss my cheek. "How 'bout we go rejoin the party? Dinner's gotta be almost ready and I can't imagine anybody'll be willin' to wait on us."

I grinned and swatted his ass. "After you, sug'."

XXXXX

 **THE END**

 **AN: Oh, these two are a fucking _blast_. They're good people (I think), but when they get together, they are _so fucking stupid_. **

**Alright, as things stand now, I've got an assload of one-shots and one more novel-length fic in me, so if you like sister fics, that might be one you should check out.**

 **Oh – and all the chapter titles together form a playlist. Plug it into your preferred method for listening to music, set it on repeat, and I think you'll actually be able to _hear_ this story. **

**Thank you for once again coming on this ride with me. I loved exploring Lee and Mary's relationship, even if I'm not so sure they loved the shit I put them through. ;)**

 **'Til next time,**

 **Abby**


End file.
